The Lyon King

If you are ever driving south on highway 177 in North Carolina, and you pass the border into South Carolina, use the driveway of the closed down gambling house* to turn around, and drive back to the last driveway in North Carolina. You'll see a house with a vegetable garden, a few horses milling around and maybe a truck parked on one side of the house. Knock on the door, and say you're my friend. You might want to time this so that you show up around dinner, but don't tell Lyon I said that.

*Right across the N.C./S.C. border are a million little casinos and gaming houses that sprung up when South Carolina made them legal about ten years ago, and then illegal about five years after that. The end result is a whole bunch of very colorful abandoned buildings that once provided gambling at a minimal distance for N.C. residents. Lyon could have walked to them.

Lyon and Christian Bell opened their home to me from the middle of August through the election. I had room, board and much appreciated company for that entire time. Lyon often said that he wished he could have done for the campaign, but he probably did more than anyone in Richmond.

Before I moved in with Lyon, I was living on the outskirts of Fayetteville with a charming Honduran family. I would have stayed there through the election if it didn't take me an hour and a half to get to Richmond County. That family had hosted other staffers and was a known commodity. Unfortunately, the campaign hadn't identified any potential hosts in Richmond County, so I had to find one on my own. I wasn't really sure how I was going to do this, but I figured I should host a couple of volunteer events and get to know people before saying, "By the way, mind if I crash at your place for the next 3 months?" I was going to have to ask that question to someone, but cold calling for voter registration drives was hard enough.

Then, one night during call time at the Fayetteville office, "Bell, Lyon" came up on my list, and my practiced thumbs entered his number. I soon realized that I had the volunteer you fantasize about during call time but almost never get. He had helped during the primary and was willing to do whatever he could from now until the election. We chatted for a bit, and eventually he asked me where I was staying. I said Fayetteville, but I was looking for a place more in his area. "We have a spare room," he said. He had known me for ten minutes.

His generosity didn't end there, and I can probably thank him for whatever scraps of sanity I had as the campaign dragged on. No matter how strange and crazy my day was, no matter how many strangers had yelled at me, or how much my numbers fell short, I had Lyon and Christian and Lyon's cooking to come home to.

And that's to say nothing of the fact that they were probably the most cultured people I met in my three months in Richmond. They had traveled all over the world, worked (as producers, designers, creative consultants) with a zillion music celebrities (the Jacksons, Mama Cass, many more that I can't remember). Lyon had met three sitting presidents and sometimes talked about Bill Clinton's charisma. They had lived in L.A., Paris, Japan, toured Europe... and yet, there they were on the same plot of land that they grew up on.

Lyon, after leaving Richmond County as soon as he could, swore he'd never go back. There was a big world waiting for him, and for a number of reasons he needed to move on. It took him decades before he had to retract that statement, but his mother was ailing, and of his many siblings, Lyon was the one to leave what he was doing and return to take care of her. Mrs. Bell passed some years ago, but Lyon stuck around. Now he's taking care of Christian who suffered a brain aneurysm in Japan, and hasn't been able to live alone since. If it sounds like he is trapped at home, just as he was at the beginning of life, know that deep down, Lyon is a caretaker. He takes care of people, not because he is trapped by his circumstances, but because he is obligated by his own soul.

There's more to say about him, he's a fascinating man, but that's enough for now, and perhaps you'll hear some of his stories if you ever find yourself driving south on NC 177.