The family of retired Air Force General William Lyon plans to give $150,000 to the Center for Oral and Public History at California State University-Fullerton, the school said.
The center is being renovated, expanded and relocated to the university’s Pollak Library. The gift is for a research and study area that will be named the William Lyon Family Reading Room.
It has more than 120 hours of interviews with General William Lyon and his father, Abraham, on newly digitized, reel-to-reel tape recordings from 1975.
The material covers Abraham Lyon’s youth in Lithuania, immigration to the United States and his time on Ellis Island, as well as accounts of the family’s business ventures, from briefly owning spirits maker, Kahlúa, in the 1940s to founding and operating thea homebuilding company that bears the family name.
The center has raised more than $920,000 toward a $1.25 million goal, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the school’s Philanthropic Foundation Board of Governors.
