Lock was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1945. He was the eldest child of Harvey Lockhart Handley Jr. and Alice Handley (Peterson), and the older brother to Jeff and Scott. The family moved to Southern California and Lock gave the valedictorian speech at his graduation from Temple City High School. He received his bachelor’s degree from Washington and Lee University, and he served as an officer in in the Army Quartermaster Corps, serving in Vietnam, and at Fort Ord near Monterey Bay, California, where he discovered his love of bird watching. After discharge from the Army, he returned to Washington and Lee and earned his law degree. He worked as an attorney for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 1972 until his retirement in 2015.
During his career as a Housing Civil Enforcement attorney, Lock played a key role in many impactful cases. The Housing Section brought cases against towns and cities for trying to exclude public housing, as well as lawsuits against owners of high-rise Manhattan apartment buildings who refused to rent to Black residents. When the Fair Housing Act was amended in 1988 to prohibit discrimination based on disability, Lock played a crucial role in developing and bringing cases against towns and cities that tried to exclude community homes for persons with disabilities. Lock recognized the bigotry behind opposition to such homes which he saw as indistinguishable from the opposition to public and affordable housing he had fought earlier in his career. And he resolved to do something about it. During the George H.W. Bush administration, Lock articulated and helped persuade the leadership of the Civil Rights Division to adopt the legal theory that zoning rules and regulations were among the “rules, policies, practices, and services” to which the Fair Housing Act required cities to make reasonable exceptions to provide equal treatment to persons with disabilities.
In 1981, Lock married Sherry Jane Handley. Together, they raised a daughter, Donna Carter Handley (wife of Andrew Rocafort), and a son, Alan Lockhart Handley. Lock was a devoted father, sharing his love of reading, bird watching, food from around the world, and his many other interests with his children. In the late ‘90s, Lock and Sherry started collecting and reselling mid-century kitchenware and other items, turning a hobby into a small business which Lock named Back From Oblivion. He originally wanted to call the business Phoenicopterus Ruber, after the scientific name for the American flamingo. Sherry, wisely and in spite of her flamingo fixation, vetoed this idea.
After retiring in 2015, Lock devoted more of his time to volunteering at the Columbia Pike Thrift Shop. He continued to sing in groups such as the New Dominion Chorale and the NOVA Community Chorus, a hobby for which he discovered a new level of passion during the last year of his life. He cared for his wife, Sherry, until her death in June of 2024.
