Remembering General William Lyon
Founding Board Chairman & 40 Year Advocate for Orange County’s Abused Children
May 26, 2020 | Santa Ana, CA – Orangewood Foundation is saddened to share the passing of our founding Board Chairman, General William Lyon, on May 22, 2020. General Lyon served as Board Chairman from 1981-1993. During his tenure, he oversaw the fundraising and building of the Orangewood Children & Family Center shelter for Orange County’s abused and neglected children. He and his family have been actively involved in the Foundation over the years, hosting and chairing fundraising events and through generous gifts. The Foundation’s onsite resource center bears the Lyon name.
“General Lyon’s passing comes during Foster Care Awareness Month,” said Orangewood Foundation CEO Chris Simonsen, “There is nobody in Orange County that did more to bring awareness to the challenges endured by foster youth, especially after they leave the child welfare system, than General William Lyon.”
In the late 1970s, General Lyon partnered with William G. Steiner, then director of the Albert Sitton Home, to build a shelter specifically for Orange County’s abused and neglected children. Leveraging their vast business, political, and community networks, the two men established the Orangewood Foundation and raised $8.5 million in five years (80% from the private sector). The result was the Orangewood Children’s Home, now called the Orangewood Children & Family Center, which opened in 1985 and was deeded to Orange County Social Services Agency to own and operate.
Said Steiner, “General Lyon was the heart and soul behind the effort to build Orangewood Children’s Home as a refuge for Orange County’s abused and neglected children. He was mostly known as a prominent builder but I knew him for 40 years as the savior of abused children in Orange County.”
After raising an additional $3.2 million for an expansion to the shelter in 1992, General Lyon and the Foundation turned their attention to the ongoing needs of children in foster care and as they transition to adulthood, typically between ages 18-21. The Foundation’s first program was a trust fund that provides grants and college scholarships for current and former foster youth. One of its earliest scholarship recipients was Yvette Verastegui. “General Lyon’s impact was enormous, on my life and so many others,” she said. “Without a doubt, I could not have achieved what I’ve achieved without his support. He was a force, a force of goodness in the community.” Today, Yvette is a Superior Court Judge in L.A. County.
Earlier this year, the Foundation’s onsite resource center was named in honor of General Lyon and his family, designated as the “General William & Willa Dean Lyon Resource Center, In Honor of William G. Steiner.” On hand were members of the Lyon and Steiner families including: Willa Dean Lyon, son Bill H. Lyon, and daughter Marcia Stone, along with Bill Steiner and his son, the Honorable Scott Steiner and daughter Laurie (Steiner) Hendron. The naming designation was a request of the Lyon family as part of a recent significant multi-year gift for the Resource Center. The center helps almost 800 youth with needs ranging from food and toiletries, to housing, job leads, and college applications.
Said Simonsen, “All of these valuable programs would have not been possible without the General’s important and compassionate decision in 1985 to have Orangewood Foundation “do more.”
While known to be a serious philanthropist and businessman, General Lyon had a softer side. Longtime Foundation Director of Marketing Sara Bazant recalls a conversation she had during a break from filming an interview with him for an Orangewood event several years ago. “I shared with the General that a friend’s family had recently moved into Coto de Caza,” Bazant said. “While driving by the Lyon home, the family’s young son pointed to the house on the hill, and said, ‘Did you know that a lion tamer lives in that house?!’ General Lyon got a good chuckle at that and then continued the conversation by sharing that on Halloween he enjoyed dressing up in costume and personally handing out candy to the children at the front gate of the home.”
“General Lyon’s creation of Orangewood Foundation is a lasting legacy for him and his family,” said Simonsen. “I and all of us at the Foundation will always strive to uphold that legacy by serving our youth in a caring, compassionate manner, just like General Lyon did for so many years. He will truly be missed.”
>>For more about the life and legacy of General Lyon, please read the article in the Orange County Register HERE, the articles in the Orange County Business Journal HERE and the opinion piece by CEO Chris Simonsen in the Orange County Register HERE.
>>To make a memorial donation in General Lyon’s memory, please click HERE.