“At 85, my memories of TT are a bit dim. I remember taxis to 103 Street where the first building was. I did love school, and with one exception, the teachers. There was one chap who could not abide anything but the strictest self discipline from us. It was some years later that I connected his strictness with the Holocaust. [During recesses] we used to etch a marble course into the sand so we could play marbles. It was quite extensive, like a miniature golf course. I was privileged from time to time to walk the two blocks to the Edmonton Journal printers to get tail end rolls of newsprint for the school. I was allowed to use the gelatine hectograph (old copy machine) which my mother disliked because I sometimes came home with ink on my clothes. When the school moved to just south of Stony Plain Road, it was close enough to our house that I could bike to it, or walk in the winter. When I graduated and went to junior high school I found it strange that it was all in English.”
“I studied Electronic Engineering at the U of A and did well my first two years. Summer times were taken up being in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) as an officer cadet. I got to do stuff like jumping out of an airplane. Most of the work was electronic and radar. In my third year I did so badly that I was told never to darken their door again. I spent the next year in the Yukon working for Canadian National Telecommunications (CNT). I begged my way back into the university and did well in my repeated third year.”
“The beginning of my fourth year was great, but not for academic reasons. I found myself with a girlfriend, Roberta Sheps, from Calgary. We married after graduation and, 62 years later, we still are. I developed hardware and software skills by working on the first mini computer (DEC PDP8), and then worked at the brand new Bell Canada Research Institute in the computer section. Then there was a three year appointment to the Atomic Energy Research Station (non-military) in the UK.”
Dave and Roberta were blessed with two children; Vivenne was born in 1969 just before they moved from Berkshire to Essex, England. Dave taught the first computer sicence course for undergraduates in the UK. They then adopted their son Tony (after an 18 month search). Dave writes that, as a baby, Tony was considered in those days to be “borderline unadoptable” (being black and having club feet). “He is one terrific kid”, Dave writes, and is an accountant, helping Dave with all the DIY stuff and other things he cannot do, and taking care of Roberta while Dave was in the hospital (having lost his leg). After teaching computer science for 40 years, Dave became heavily involved in theatre doing admin and lighting, while Roberta acted and directed. He became very interested in students with disabilities and became the university’s disability officer. Of course, the disability field became very personal once Vivienne was diagnosed with MS at the age of fifteen. “She was quite a gal; physics PhD, a senior scientific officer, sky diver and rock headbanger.” Tragically, Vivienne passed away in 2021.
At age 60, Dave “became chair of the charity Opportunities through Technology, which operated under the social model of disability: client driven”. For 12 years that the charity existed, Dave writes proudly that they had about 1,500 clients with a 95% success rate. When he retired at age 65, the university made him an honourary fellow and keeps in contact with the department to this day. Of course, Dave cannot be idle, and keeps busy running a small jazz club (Fleece Jazz) in the UK, where he is the “sound guy”. He’s also on the committee of the Suffolk Villages Festival, which “holds concerts of early music, with a professional orchestra, a great choir and world class soloists. The jazz club gets top musicians from the UK, Europe and sometimes the US”.
Thank you, Dave Lyons, for sharing your story with us. Interested in re-connecting with Dave? You are welcome to reach out to Natalie at nataliesoroka@talmudtorahsociety.com. (Jan. 2024)
