[2] In his real estate career, Lyon developed numerous area subdivisions, including Briarmeadow, Spring Branch, Farnham Park, Tanglewilde, and Briarbend.
[3] In 1984, Lyon completed The Huntingdon, a 34-story high luxury residential condominium with 120 units located at 2121 Kirby Drive in River Oaks.
Lyon was an early Republican, having worked for Thad Hutcheson, an attorney from Houston,[4] the party's choice in a special election for the U.S. Senate held on April 2, 1957.
Hutcheson finished third in the race with 23 percent of the vote; then U.S. Representative Martin Dies, Jr., known for his House investigations into communist infiltration placed second.
[5] A friend, Welcome W. Wilson, Sr., also a Houston real estate businessman, recalls Lyon's GOP labors, having built the party:
[Like the time he fell asleep in a telephone booth at the Houston Club and did not wake up until 5 o'clock the next morning] ...[6]From 1968 to 1973, Lyon was the director of the finance committee of the Republican Party of Harris County.
[2] After Reagan's inauguration in 1981, Lyon donated $10,000 to the White House redecoration fund,[10] which raised more than $700,000, much of which was spent on the private living quarters.
[11] Lyon was a member of the conservative think tank, the Center for National Policy; other figures in the organization during the 1980s included Paul Weyrich, Nelson Bunker Hunt, Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson, and Howard Phillips.
[2] His second wife of some three years, Desiree; his mother, Virginia Asbell Lyon Hedrick (1904–2000), was a native of Pierre, South Dakota, who was formerly a lecturer for the Dale Carnegie company.