Hazel Angeline Lyon

Hazel Angeline Lyon, 95, Lincoln, died Saturday (6/19/04). Hazel was born near Waterville, Kan. (12/12/08), to Charles and Sophia Hager. As a child, she rode to the Swedish Lutheran church in a horse and buggy, and in winter she rode in a sleigh, under a horsehair blanket with heated bricks at her feet. At 4, she and her sister Bernice walked three miles to the country school. In her teens, after Walther League, they skated down the Blue River with bonfires on the banks to light their way. During her first year in college, she eloped with William Merle "Spike" Lyon and raised three children with him during the Depression on $12 a month. She collected and sold milk bottles for five cents each to buy Christmas presents for her children. In time, when Merle operated Southside Cleaners, he and Hazel joined other College View merchant couples for lodge meetings above the fire barn and danced to the big bands at the Turnpike and for every Husker football game. Widowed at age 59, she learned the cleaning business to pay the medical expenses and worked 10 to 12 hours a day and sometimes walked through snowdrifts to the shop in the middle of the night to keep the boiler going. She expanded the business but took time off to travel the world two to three times a year on jet planes unimagined in her horse-and-buggy childhood. She also served numerous terms as most excellent chief of Sunrise Temple of Pythian Sisters, including grand chief of Nebraska, in addition to belonging to the Order of the Eastern Star, Myrtle Chapter No. 94.

Hazel was the friend of everyone she met and was loving and generous to her family. Christmases at her house were legendary and lasted all year round as she never took down her tree or decorations. Hazel's longtime companion, Dick Meyer, said, "Hazel was always more concerned for the welfare of others than for her own; she was an angel in disguise." In the final year of her life, her large family and their spouses celebrated her 95th birthday at the Nebraska Club with dinner and champagne and a cake that almost caught on fire!

Survivors: son, daughter-in-law, Gary Charles and Gayle (Ehrlich), Grand Rapids, Minn.; daughters, son-in-law, Karen and Stan Zurek, Westminster, Colo., Gwen Storer Krieser, rural Garland; grandchildren, spouses, Mike Lyon, Blaine, Minn, Celeste Lyon, Eau Claire, Wis., Kathy and Bruce Dominguez, Lake Orion, Mich., Jill and Gary Yates, Arvada, Colo., Becky and Tim Tafoya, Golden, Colo., William James "Jim" and Terri Storer, Loveland, Colo., Holly and Dave Wagner, rural Garland; great-grandchildren, Andrew Lyon, Heather and Shawn Gulden, Jesse Laurer, Angelyn, Kym and Joice Dominguez, Davis Yates, Trey and Cathryn Tafoya, Krysta Storer, David, Wendy and Becky Wagner; great-great-grandchild, Hannah Lynn Kolterman-Wagner. Preceded in death by: parents, Charles and Sophia Hager; husband, William Merle "Spike" Lyon; grandson Tim Purvis; sisters, Bernice Perry, Ruth Hager.

Services:11 a.m. Saturday, Westminster Presbyterian Church, 26th and South streets. Dr. Andrew McDonald. No visitation; cremation. Memorials: Sesostris Shrine transportation fund or American Cancer Society. Butherus, Maser & Love Funeral Home, 4040 A St.