D. Willard Lyon papers

David Willard Lyon was born May 13, 1870 on a river houseboat in China. After spending his first decade in Hangzhou, he moved with his Presbyterian missionary parents to the U.S., and was educated at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio and the McCormick Tehological Seminary in Chicago. Lyon entered YMCA work in 1895 as the first field secreatry in China, establishing and directing the work in that country for the next forty years. A fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese, he became an authority on the language and on Chinese literature for English speakers. He helped establish the literary department for the Chinese YMCA, did extensive translation work, and heading the secretarial training department of the Chinese Y. Lyon resided and worked in China until 1934, when he retired to Claremont, California. For the next decade he lectured on Chinese history, philosophy, and religion at a number of California colleges and universities, and was instrumental in founding the Society of Oriental Studies in Claremont. Lyon married Grace E. McGaw in 1895 and the couple had five children. Lyon died March 16, 1949.

[Biographical information is compiled from and largely quoted from Lyon's obituary in the Pomona Progress Bulletin (March 17, 1949) and other materials from the YMCA Biographical Files (Y.USA.12)]