On July 6, 1902, future Little Rock Mayor Haco O. Boyd was born in Leslie, Arkansas. At the age of four, his family moved to Little Rock; he graduated from the Little Rock public schools. He attended and graduated from Hendrix College.
In World War II, he was in the Army Air Corps. He was a very decorated soldier earning two Purple Hearts, a Legion of Merit, and a Bronze star among other designations from the United States. He also received high military honors from numerous European governments. Boyd would remain in the Air National Guard and retired with the rank of Colonel in 1964.
As a businessman, he was a founder of Rebsamen Ford and then state manager of Benjamin Moore for Arkansas. In 1952, he joined Union Life Insurance. Throughout his career, he received most any recognition and honor and designation that the field of life insurance offered.
In November 1968, he won a three-candidate race for the Little Rock City Board of Directors. One of the candidates he defeated was former (and future) Director and Mayor Byron Morse. In January 1969, he was selected to serve as Mayor of Little Rock.
One week later, Mayor Boyd and 70 others were on an Eastern Airlines plane headed for a life insurance convention in Nassau, departing from Miami. A passenger hijacked it and the plane was diverted to Cuba. The next morning the passengers were returned to Miami and then sent to Nassau without incident. Once the media found out that one of the passengers was the Mayor of Little Rock, he was interviewed by numerous newspapers. Mayor Boyd expressed that they had been treated well by the Cuban government, but that all in all he had rather not made that leg of the trip.
In other civic involvement, Boyd served on the Little Rock Airport Commission, including a term as chair. He was also honored for his involvement with the Boy Scouts of America and Easter Seals.
In September 1923, Boyd married Mary Josephine “Polly” Goodrum. They were married until her death in February 1977. Haco Boyd died on March 27, 1988. The couple are buried at Roselawn Cemetery. They had two children and four grandchildren.