Susybelle Lyons

Susybelle Wilkinson "Duke" Lyons (Louisiana socialite and businesswoman)
Born	October 5, 1923 Shreveport, Louisiana
Died	July 7, 2012 Shreveport, Louisiana
Political Party	Republican Alma mater: Clifton Ellis Byrd High School (Shreveport) Stephens College (Columbia, Missouri)
Spouse	Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr. (divorced) Father: W. Scott Wilkinson Mother: Margaret West Wilkinson Father-in-law: Charlton Lyons Brother-in-law: Hall M. Lyons Children: Susybelle Lyons Gosslee Stafford Lyons Charlton H. Lyons III Sally Lyons Wood Laurie Lyons Walker Marian Lyons
Religion	Unitarian Universalist Church

Susybelle Wilkinson Lyons, sometimes known as Duke Lyons (October 5, 1923 – July 31, 2007), was a socialite, businesswoman, and philanthropist in her native Shreveport, Louisiana, who was particularly active in the Family Violence Program of the Young Women's Christian Association.

Background

Named for her maternal aunt, Susybelle West Church, Lyons was one of two children of the former Margaret West (1898-1995) and W. Scott Wilkinson, a Shreveport attorney and businessman, originally from Coushatta in Red River Parish in northwestern Louisiana. who was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for Caddo Parish, a position which he held for only one term from 1920 to 1924. Her paternal grandfather, John Dallas Wilkinson (1867-1929), was also a lawyer, a delegate to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1898, and the author of a book on the law and personal injuries. Her maternal great-grandfather, Nelson Jackson Scott, was a judge in Homer in Claiborne Parish, also in North Louisiana.

Susybelle Lyons graduated in 1940 from Clifton Ellis Byrd High School in Shreveport and then attended Stephens College, a women's institution in Columbia, Missouri. Lyons transferred to 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, often considered the "father" of the revived 20th century Louisiana Republican Party, 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, Susybelle Wilkinson wed Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr. (1921-2019), a graduate of Yale University then stationed with the United States Army in Augusta, Georgia. That summer, Susybelle was living on Long Island, where her father, who had been an Army officer in World War I, was a colonel in World War II. The couple first resided in New Orleans, where Lyons, Jr., had been born on December 11, 1921 though he immediately moved with his parents to Shreveport, where he spent the majority of his life. After the war, the junior Lyons attended and graduated from Tulane University Law School. Like his father, he became a Shreveport oilman, but a political Independent.

Charlton Lyons, Jr., was active in community theatre as an actor and singer and was a benefactor of countless charitable drives for the YMCA, Genevieve Orphanage, and many other organizations. Between 1945 and 1956, Charlton and Susybelle had five daughters and one son, but the couple later divorced, and Lyons, Jr. in 1974 wed the former Peggy McClure (1942-2025) of Shreveport. Susybelle's brother-in-law, Hall McCord Lyons, while living in Lafayette, was the Republican nominee for Louisiana's 3rd congressional district seat in 1966 and subsequently the American Independent Party choice for the United States Senate in 1972, having lost out to the Democrat J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., also of Shreveport, former Governor John J. McKeithen, a Democrat running as an Independent, and Republican Ben C. Toledano. The seat was vacant because of the death of Senator Allen J. Ellender.

Political, business, and philanthropic activities

Lyons was herself a delegate to the 1960 Republican National Convention, which met in Chicago to nominate the unsuccessful ticket of Richard M. Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., former U.S. senator from Massachusetts, who had been unseated in 1952 by John F. Kennedy. 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 1996, Lyons served as the co-chairwoman with Marilyn S. Joiner, the director of marketing and public relations for the Willis-Knighton Health System in Shreveport, of the YWCA's $1.1 million capital campaign drive. Lyons was a patron of the arts: the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1948, of which Hall Lyons was once the president; the Shreveport Opera, which has hosted Beverly Sills and Leontyne Price, and the Shreveport Little Theater, which dates to 1922. Her mother, Margaret Wilkinson, was also active in the Shreveport YWCA and the Shreveport Opera. In 1960, Lyons was a founding member of the Pierremont Oaks Tennis Club, which now offers twenty-one courts, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and full-service dining and lounge facilities. She was a world traveler, a seamstress, and a gardener. She was a board member of the foundation of the LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport and a donor to the institution.

An excellent cook, Lyons formerly operated her own restaurant. In 1990, she was listed as a general partner of Wilkinson Properties Limited, with a mailing address in Memphis, Tennessee. 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."

Death

Lyons died at the age of eighty-three at her 7130 Gilbert Drive residence in Shreveport. After a private burial at Forest Park East Cemetery, a memorial service was held on August 4, 2007, at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Shreveport. In addition to Laurie Lyons and her husband, Henry Clay Walker, IV (born August 1942), Lyons was survived by her five other children and their spouses: Susybelle L. Gosslee (born 1945), the former president of the League of Women Voters chapter in Dallas and the former wife of John Michael Gosslee; Stafford Lyons, wife of Henry P. Offermann; Charlton H. Lyons, III, and wife, the former Dianne Lewis; Sally L. Wood, and Marian L. McGoldrick, wife of Bruce Mortin McGoldrick. Her sister, Margaret Wilkinson Wilson (1929-2017), formerly Margaret Butler, survived her, as did thirteen grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren. Her oldest grandchild, John Wilkinson Gosslee of Dallas, died in 2013 of cancer at the age of forty-eight. According to her obituary, Lyons "loved the arts, music, and anything beautiful. She loved people and dogs, children and parties, and above all – laughter. Her generosity, sense of humor, and love of life will long be remembered."

On February 1, 2008, Lyons's heirs held an estate sale at her home. The sale, which included Cartier jewelry and an assortment of unique household items, attracted a large crowd and was covered for The Shreveport Times by the photographer Greg Pearson and Margaret Martin, who wrote numerous articles about Lyons, whom she described as "one of those delightful persons we met through our long career."