Susybelle Lyons

Susybelle Wilkinson Lyons, sometimes known as Duke Lyons (October 5, 1923 - July 31, 2007), was a socialite and philanthropist in her native Shreveport, Louisiana, who was particularly active in the Family Violence Program of the Young Women's Christian Association. In 1996, Lyons served as the co-chairwoman with Marilyn Joiner of the YWCA's $1.1 million capital campaign drive.
Background
Lyons was one of two children of the former Margaret West (1898-1995) and W. Scott Wilkinson, a Shreveport attorney and businessman,
who at the time of her birth was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, a position he held for one term from 1920 to 1924. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority.
Lyons was the daughter-in-law of Charlton Lyons, considered the "father of the Republican Party in Louisiana" and Marjorie Hall Lyons (1895-1971), for whom the theater at United Methodist-affiliated Centenary College in Shreveport is named. In August 1944, at St. Bartholemew's Episcopal Church in New York City, she married Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr. (born December 11, 1921), a graduate of Yale University who was then stationed with the United States Army in Augusta, Georgia. That summer, Susybelle was living on Long Island, where her father, an Army officer in World War I was also a colonel in World War II. The couple lived in New Orleans, where he attended and graduated from Tulane University Law School. Like his father, he became an oilman in Shreveport but a political Independent. Charlton and Susybelle had six children together between 1945 and 1956 She was a contributor in 2003 and 2004 to the Republican National Committee and to at least one Democrat, Buddy Roemer, upon Roemer's last election to Louisiana's 4th congressional district seat in 1986. Roemer subsequently switched parties in 1991 while serving as governor of Louisiana.
In addition to her support for the YMCA, Lyons was a patron of the arts: the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, of which Hall Lyons was once the president; the Shreveport Opera, and the Shreveport Little Theater. A founding member of the Pierremont Oaks Tennis Club, she was also a seamstress, a gardener, a cook, and a world traveler.

Her daughter, Shreveport attorney Laurie Wilkinson Lyons (born April 1954), a Democrat, told the journalist Margaret Martin of The Shreveport Times that her mother grieved for women who struggle with family violence and opened her home and heart to the needy: "It was not unusual for us to come home and there would be somebody we didn't know. Mama would be consoling them, and they would spend the night, people going through a difficult time in their lives." and the former wife of John Michael Gosslee;<ref namejwgobit/> daughter Stafford Lyons, wife of Henry P. Offermann; Charlton H. Lyons, III, and wife, the former Dianne Lewis; Sally L. Wood, and Marian L. McGoldrick, and husband Bruce Mortin McGoldrick. She was also survived by her sister, Margaret Wilkinson Wilson, thirteen grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren.<ref nameobit/>

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu