Bill Lyon Rides Again
Written By Robin Shepherd
I
magine being raised in the Los
Gatos-West San Jose area of the
1940s and early 1950s, when
a house could be bought for
$25,000 and country lanes were
bordered by acres of orchards. Young
Bill attended the Children’s Country
School in Los Gatos, where horseback
riding was part of everyday activities. In
the summers and on weekends he rode
in the school’s Pied Piper Riding Club.
As Bill tells it, he was “a heck of a
lot more comfortable in the saddle than
at a school desk.” His free time was
spent training his sorrel-red mare in the
school’s riding arena or in the Los Gatos
hil ls. Bill and Betsy won than 50 blue
ribbons at local horse shows from San
Francisco to Monterey.
In the above photo, Bill Lyon grins
a mile wide and his green eyes light up
at the mere mention of “Betsy.” At the
tender age of 13, he lost his heart to a
female of the four-legged variety. She
70
was a quarter horse, a gift from his dad,
and he named her Betsy Buttons.
“When I graduated from high school
and prepared to head off to college,
my dad sold Betsy.” Those early years
kindled a passion that would lure Bill
back to riding at age 30.
Family and Career
Bill met his wife, Carolyn, in 1959
at Camden High School. She didn’t
fall head over heels when they fi rst
met, but Bill was persistent and won
her affections in time. They married
while he was a junior at San José State
University where he studied Business
and Industrial Management. Carolyn
worked for a loan company, and then
for many years at Foothill College.
During college, Bill worked as a part-
time teller at Bank of the West. After
graduating, he became an operations
offi cer at the bank’s West San Jose
branch.
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
MAY/JUNE 2017
“I really wanted to become an
accountant, so I set up a small book-
keeping business on the side while
working for the bank. Carolyn and I
bought our first house in Cambrian
Park where we raised our sons, Ross
and Scott.” [Chris, see family photo:
pictured left to right, Scott, Bill,
Carolyn and Ross.]
From there, Bill spent four years in
a cost accounting department at FMC,
followed by two years as a controller
for a Santa Clara-based printed circuit
board maker. Then Bill made what he
called “a wrong turn” in his career.
“I got the idea to do accounting in
the livestock industry and put an ad
in the Western Livestock Journal. That
led to a job in the Imperial Valley.” The
Lyons rented out their San Jose home
and moved to Southern California.
That work brought him into contact
with a national CPA firm and Bill got to
thinking, “I can do what those young
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