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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Sponsor

Honored by:
Jennifer Lyons

CDR Joseph E. Lyons was born in September 1944 in Charlotte, NC the first child of Joseph and Evelyn Lyons. His father changed jobs often, so the family led a peripatetic life, moving frequently. By high school, they had settled in Charlotte, NC. CDR Lyons attended Charlotte Catholic High School, graduating in 1962, and was awarded a Navy ROTC scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned a BA in History and was commissioned on June 6, 1966 (or 6/6/66, a fact of which he was inordinately proud) as a Surface Warfare Officer (although the term was only coined in the 1970s, it means an officer that serves on ships, as compared to an aviator or a submariner). I suspect he would have preferred to be a pilot but for his eyesight, as he had a lifelong love of planes. After commissioning he served on several ships and deployed aboard USS HUNTERDON COUNTY (LST-838) to Vietnam. He married Miss Constance (Connie) Smith in September 1969, two weeks after returning from that deployment. He always said that was the best way for a man to get married, to miss all the preparations and show up right before the ceremony. They were also married on his birthday, which certainly made remembering their anniversary date easy for him! His next duty assignment was as a student at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, CA, where their first child, Jennifer, was born. After graduation, they moved to Newport, RI and their second child, Joanna, was born. The family moved several times after that, eventually winding up in Fort Monmouth, NJ in 1980. CDR Lyons retired from the Navy in 1986 after 20 years and held several jobs as a civilian, first as a defense contractor and then, after getting his master's in library science, as a librarian and Director of Library Services. He and Connie fully retired in 2007 and moved to High Point, NC. He passed away on June 6, 2019. His love of history, specifically military history, persisted throughout his life, finding expression in his modelling hobby. I would estimate during his lifetime he built over 200 models (mostly of aircraft but also of ships), leaving behind at least 25 kits still waiting to be built. He especially loved to build models of aircraft with historical connections. One was The Gremlin's Roost, a B-24, flown during WWII by 2LT Victor Smith, Connie's uncle. It was shot down over Germany on 5 January 1944 and 2LT Smith remained in a German POW camp until the end of the war. A second model, of the Chow-Hound, a B-17 flown during WWII that crashed in France on August 8, 1944, killing all aboard, was donated to the 305th Air Mobility Wing in Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst on the 75th anniversary of the crash, for inclusion in their permanent display honoring the crew. He would be especially proud to have a place on the Wall of Honor at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. During one visit, to the main facility on the Mall in Washington, D.C., he walked around describing in detail the history of every plane on display. Soon, there were a line of fellow tourists, following at a discrete distance, soaking up his knowledge. I picture him now sharing that same knowledge with the other honorees.

Submitted by his daughter, Jennifer Lyons.