People Remembered: Josephine Lyons

An OPC member since 1960, Josephine Lyons arrived in New York in her twenties from her hometown of Cincinnati, stayed at the Barbizon, became Miss Subways, produced for NBC News, worked for Arthur Godfrey, CBS, Benton & Boles, Ted Bates, Kenyon & Eckhardt and covered presidential conventions. She was a good friend of the International Center for Photography, a member of the Coffee House and the OPC,and a founding member of New York Women in Film. Lyons died on Palm Sunday,April 5.

Her credits also included interviews of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Alan Paton and Nadine Gordimer when she was sent to South Africa by ABC. As writer/producer for the Today Show on NBC she interviewed Henry Kissinger and President Carter. She covered the 1992 and 1996 Democratic conventions and Hilary Clinton’s Senate campaign. She also was a writer/producer on a Disney TV movie “Goodbye Miss Fourth of July” as well as an associate producer for two off-Broadway plays. She was on the OPC Board of Governors (2000 – 2002) and a judge in the Foundation’s scholarship contest for many years.

Both Jane Reilly and Sonya Fry, executive directors of the OPC Foundation and the OPCrespectively, attended the memorial cocktail party for Lyons at the Coffee House. Itwas a fitting tribute to Lyons  who would have loved the idea of a celebration, not a wake. There was an enjoyable exchange of funny, poignant and some outlandish “Josephine Stories.”