By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PERHAM – David J. Lyon, former SAD 45 superintendent, is being remembered as a great leader who handled any and all issues with ease and grace. He passed away Dec. 24 at the age of 67.
“He certainly was a great leader for the community,” said current Superintendent Ed Buckley. “He came back twice to be superintendent after he retired, and took over both times when they had problems … serious financial problems the second time. I took his place, so he was a mentor to me in a way because he gave me a lot of good knowledge.”
Buckley said one valuable piece of advice Lyon gave him was to “always open the mail.”
“I’ve always done it since then,” he said. “That way, you know what’s going on in the district – you know what bills are coming in, and other things that are happening. David was a very hands-on person who was well liked.”
Lyon hired Larry Hallowell in 1993 to be the principal of Washburn District High School. The two and their families also wintered in Cypress Lakes, Fla.
“Dave was a professional’s professional. He was a great educator and always gave his honest and 100 percent effort,” said Hallowell. “He was a very supportive cohort and looked out for the best interests of his staff.”
Hallowell said he and Lyon did a lot of projects around their homes together.
“We’d help each other put up ceiling fans and build fences around the patios at our winter homes in Florida,” he said. “We were putting a ceiling fan up in his house one day and he said, ‘How am I going to hold that up there and get it screwed in?’ I said, ‘I tell you what, you hold it up there and I’ll turn the ladder.’ We had a good time together.”
Hallowell remembers a particularly interesting game of golf.
“One time Dave hit a ball pretty close to the water, and we were riding up to it. I could tell he was really focused in on the next shot,” he said. “We parked the cart and he got out and started walking over to the ball, and I happened to glance over and noticed a 12-foot alligator about 20 feet behind the ball. I didn’t dare say anything and Dave walked up, hit the ball and came back to the cart. I said, ‘Dave, did you see that sign back there that said don’t feed the gators? Well you almost did, look!’ He looked over and saw the alligator and the expression on his face was priceless.
“We saw each other down here pretty near every day, and when in Maine we talked probably 4-5 times a week,” said Hallowell. “He was a wonderful friend who I will miss every day.”
Roger Crouse knew Lyon since the early 1980s.
“In 1984, I became a member of the SAD 45 board of directors, the year that David was hired to become the superintendent,” he said. “I was honored to serve on the board for about 14 years under the direction of David, many of them as chair.”
Crouse recalls how determined Lyon was to build a new school after the elementary school was destroyed by fire.
“In 1988, an addition was being constructed to the original Washburn District Elementary School,” he said. “Early in the morning of June 28, 1988, I was notified early that the entire building was engulfed in fire; thus began one of the biggest tasks that David Lyon faced as a superintendent. He, the school board, and the community had to come up with a facility to replace the destroyed structure.
“David was quick to respond because temporary classrooms had to be put in place by August for school start-up and an architect had to be hired to design a new school,” Crouse said. “It was with great satisfaction that I was able to work alongside David during the whole design and construction process. David made sure all of the funding and other measures were in place for a seamless process of getting the job completed. The new school, now named in his honor, was opened for students on Sept. 5, 1990.”
Mike McIntosh, current school board chair, introduced the notion of renaming the school in Lyon’s honor.
“The board very enthusiastically voted unanimously to do it,” he said. “If you look back on Dave’s career, he literally built the building that we dedicated to him in October of 2009. He was the superintendent in charge of construction, but when he was the superintendent, he produced an excellent educational result. When David retired as a full-time superintendent, Washburn graduates were among the top 20 schools in the state on Department of Education tests. Yet, our costs per pupil were among the lowest 20 schools. No other superintendent matched Dave’s results with the resources that he had to work with.
“Given the resources that he had, it was just extraordinary what he put out for a product,” said McIntosh. “He came out of retirement twice to help the district, so that’s why we wanted to rename the school after him. Dave was a very unemotional guy, but he burst into tears at the dedication. He was very proud of that honor and what he did for the Washburn community.”
McIntosh described Lyon as a very “competent” person.
“Whatever he did, he made it look easy and he was just good at it,” said McIntosh. “He ran the district for basically a generation and there were no major problems during his leadership. He handled everything that came along.
“My own kids were students when the elementary school burned down and he helped get the new school built,” he said, “and there was hardly any disruption to their classroom experience. He just handled things well. Dave had enormous goodwill in Washburn, Wade and Perham, and will be missed by everyone who knew him.”
Lyon is survived by his wife of 26 years, Cynthia; a sister, Constance Ennis; mother, Helen Quimby, both of Caribou; stepson, Matthew Morris and his wife, Alice; and granddaughter, Charlotte Claire, all of Old Orchard Beach, as well as nieces and nephews.
An Army veteran serving with the 68th Infantry, later with Headquarters Company, 17th Combat Aviation group, from June 1969 to December 1970 in Vietnam, a memorial service and interment will be held at a later date at the Veterans Cemetery in Caribou. Donations may be made in Lyon’s memory to C.A.N.C.E.R., P.O. Box 811, Presque Isle, Maine 04769.
A complete obituary is found on page 5.
