SUSAN STOREY LYMAN

1919 - 2016

LYMAN, Susan Storey Age 97, died December 29, 2016 at Brookhaven in Lexington, Massachusetts. She was born May 17, 1919, the daughter of Charles Moorfield Storey and Susan Jameson Sweetser. She married, first, in 1939, Samuel P. Shaw, Jr. and second, Ronald T. Lyman, Jr. in 1950. She is survived by her brother James M. Storey of Boston, her daughter Jane S. Shaw of Medford, her son Ronald T. Lyman, III of Cleveland Heights, Ohio and her step-daughters, Jennifer Lyman Littlefield of Cambridge and Mabel L. Lyman of Belmont, as well as by three grandchildren, five step-grandchildren and six step great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by both her husbands and by her sons S. Parkman Shaw, III and Charles Storey Shaw and by her stepdaughter Elizabeth P. Lyman. She attended Park School, Winsor School and Radcliffe College, from which she received her AB Degree Cum Laude in 1949. She attended the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration in 1950 and, shortly after her second marriage, earned a Diploma from Cornell University for the Short Course in Beef Husbandry. She served on the Board of Trustees of Radcliffe College from 1958 to 1981 and was Board Chairman from 1972 to 1980. She was Radcliffe College Marshal from 1955 to 1958, Director of the Radcliffe College Fund from 1970 to 1972 and Acting Dean of the Bunting (now Radcliffe) Institute in 1973-74. She was one of three founders of the Beacon Hill Nursery School in the mid-1950s, and received a Masters in Education from Harvard in 1963. Her interest in historic preservation led her to pursue the summer course at the National Trust (UK) School at Attingham Park, and she was active in the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now Historic New England, both as a Trustee from 1961 to 1968 and as a volunteer with a particular focus on her husband's family place, The Vale in Waltham where she developed and operated a wedding business that continues today. She was the first woman Board Chair of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (1972 - 1977) and served as a Board Member of the Rutland Corner House, Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses and the College of the Atlantic (1990 - 2000). After the death of her second son, she founded the New England Chapter of the National Suicide Foundation, now the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. She received the Alumnae Recognition Award in 1979 from the Radcliffe Alumnae Association, the Harvard Medal in 1984, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1999 for lifetime achievement. In addition to her charitable work, she enjoyed working alongside her husband on his cattle farm in Henniker, New Hampshire, and, latterly, spending summers in the house her grandfather built on Great Cranberry Island, Maine and winters at Yeamans Hall Club outside Charleston, South Carolina. Gifts in memory of Susan Lyman may be made to Historic New England for the benefit of The Vale (Lyman Estate), ATTN: Development, 141 Cambridge St., Boston, MA 02114 - or - to The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, c/o Recording Secretary's Office, Harvard University, 124 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

A Memorial Service at King's Chapel in Boston is planned for Spring 2017.