A Well-Weathered View

By Stephanie Berrong
Photos by Jerry Butts

For 20 years we have welcomed Jeff Lyons into our homes. Every evening the chief meteorologist at 14-WFIE First Alert Weather, shows up in the living rooms of thousands of Tri-State television viewers.

With his easygoing nature and deadpan humor (not to mention his dual doplar radar), Lyons has proven a charming guest. But the winds have shifted, as they say in the biz, and now the weatherman and his wife Kate are inviting the Tri-State into their home.

Located on the cusp of one of Evansville’s most distinctive landmarks – historic Reitz Hill – the Lyons home is one of six on the Evansville Philhar-monic Guild’s 2008 Homes of Note House Tour on April 12.

The brick four-bedroom where Jeff, Kate, and their three children – Patrick, 14; Justin, 11; and Natalie, 9 – have lived since 2000, affords one of the best views the city has to offer. A peek through their living room windows reveals Evansville’s Downtown skyline skirting the north bank of the Ohio River as the water turns south toward Henderson, Ky. The Lyons family enjoys golden sunrises over the same vista. “Seeing the sun rise every morning over the river, it’s very nice,” Kate says. “Something we kind of take for granted.” As you might guess, the hill is also the place to be to watch Evansville’s Fourth of July fireworks over the river, and crowds flock to the Lyons’ neighborhood. “We call it the Battle of Reitz Hill,” Jeff jokes.

The area’s appeal lies in its panoramic views but also in its rich history. Reitz Hill is named for F.J. Reitz High School, the second public high school in Evansville, which was built atop the hill in 1918. While the hill is perhaps best known for the Reitz Bowl – an impressive football stadium built into a natural bowl on the side of the hill – it was once called “Coal Mine Hill,” because of its proximity to Ingleside mine. In 1866 local businessman John Ingle pioneered coal mining on a commercial scale in Southwestern Indiana when he sank a mine at the foot of the hill. During the Civil War a brass cannon was placed at the base of the storied hill to protect the city from its Confederate neighbors, one of whom wrote the Evansville Daily Journal in 1861 saying, “Evansville would be safer in hell than where she now is.”

In the early 1920s residential development began on what was then a densely wooded hilltop around the high school, and in 1925 Walter Dreier built the house the Lyons now call home. Framed copies of Dreier’s original house blueprints create a unique centerpiece in the Lyons’ foyer.

The meteorologist himself has deep roots on the city’s West Side, with family connections to its early history and to Reitz Hill. Modestly displayed in a hallway on the first floor of the Lyons home is an 1828 land grant issued to Jeff’s ancestor Patrick Lyons, who came to Evansville from Ireland. Patrick owned land located roughly where the CSX Railroad yards are now, near the intersection of Tekoppel Avenue and Old Henderson Road, Jeff says. Also in the area is “a big tree and a little knoll and a bunch of gravestones,” he explains, and one of these stones marks the gravesite of Patrick Lyons.

A graduate of F.J. Reitz High School, Jeff’s relationship to Reitz Hill is even more entrenched. His grandfather, Ed Lyons, and his father Larry Lyons also attended the school. Larry Lyons taught biology at Reitz High School for 23 years and served as football coach and athletic director for a time. Jeff says they didn’t live on Reitz Hill, but “we always loved to come up here.”

On cold days, a fire burns in the Lyons’ cozy living room, and there is nothing stuffy or pretentious about it. “We really live in here,” Jeff explains. “Family’s real important,” he adds, but he doesn’t have to. Every room of the Lyons home is full of heirlooms and memories — “Things I remember from when I was growing up,” Jeff says. His mother’s watercolor paintings are displayed on salmon-hued walls; his great-grandmother’s needlepoint bell pull, now out of commission, serves as an intricate wall hanging. On the mantle, two heirloom men’s hats — a top hat belonging to the meteorologist’s great-great-grandfather and a bowler hat belonging to his great-grandfather — rest on either side of an antique humidor, also passed down the family tree. Jeff explains his cherished collection by invoking a great American frontier novel. “I’m kind of the Last of the Mohicans,” he says.

“We’ve inherited a lot of sentimental things from his family,” says Kate, a native of Fort Wayne, Ind., but it’s not all seriousness and nostalgia. An old typewriter resurrected from his grandmother’s basement is now a gag gift traded between Jeff and his friend, designer Kip Farmer. “I just happen to have it right now,” Jeff says. Currently he is using it as a doorstop.

On warm days, Evansvillians seem drawn to the hill. They pull off the road and abandon their cars. Some walk their dogs, others simply enjoy the view. The meteorologist might be mowing the grass when a pedestrian passing by will ask him to forecast tomorrow’s weather. It’s an occupational hazard to which Jeff and his family are accustomed, and he is just as gracious about this innocuous intrusion as he is about sharing Reitz Hill. “I think everyone feels like they own a piece of the hill,” Jeff explains.

It’s difficult to deny that the Lyons family, with their ties to the West Side and to F.J. Reitz High School, might have a larger claim than the rest of us.