Elizabeth Foltz Lyon, known fondly to many as ‘Ms Liz’, passed away after a long illness on January 27, 2014, in McKinney, Texas, where she lived the last seven years with the family of her younger daughter, Marion. She was 90.
Liz was born in Philadelphia on Valentine’s Day (14 February) in 1923, to Frank G. Foltz, a veteran of World War I who worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Marguerite ‘Daisy’ Clayton, daughter of Frank B. Clayton, who founded the eponymous Philadelphia sheet metal manufacturing company that survives to this day.
She graduated from Lower Merion High School, where she was class salutatorian and debating champion; trained as a medical technician; and worked for many years for pioneering heart surgeon William ‘Billy’ Lykoff.
In 1952 she met and married Armstrong Lyon, a Royal Canadian Air Force veteran of World War II, also from the ‘Mainline’, who was transitioning to the US Air Force officer corps. They had two daughters, Pamela Christine Lyon and Marion Victoria Lyon-Hayes.
With these births Liz found her true vocation as a mother, a role she personified to many across the country and around the world.
She is predeceased by her husband and her brother, Frank G. Foltz Jr.
She is survived by her daughters, who were present at her passing; grandson Zachary William Armstrong Hayes; and sons-in-law Hal P. Hayes and Richard J. Bradshaw.
There will be no public memorial. A party was held yesterday in her honour at the home she lived in until the last hours of her life. Donations can be made in her name to the Alzheimer’s Association at http://www.alz.org/join_the_cause_donate.asp