Lyons heads to grad school after finding hope and help through AU CE program

07/22/2021 GROVE CITY,  Ohio --- Chris Lyons is ready to take on the world.

He recently received his degree from Ashland University and is excited to enter graduate school at The Ohio State University in the fall. Newly married to a young lady he’s known since childhood, he’s an adoring stepfather to two precocious girls.

And like any parents watching their child succeed, Lyons’s parents are all smiles, ready for family photos and ready to talk about the unusual path that brought their family to this point.

Because, as they’ll tell you, the picture wasn’t always this rosy.

Chris Lyons has spent his adult life thus far in prison. “We still loved him,” said his mother, Lisa, a veteran healthcare worker just off the night shift. “We wanted to choke him. But we still loved him.”

His story had a happy beginning. Born in northern Ohio, Lyons moved with his family to the Columbus area in time to start school in suburban Grove City.

“I was involved in almost everything you could be” by high school, he said. He was a wrestler, a drummer and, more than anything, a singer and an actor, with an eye toward a career in musical theater.

He didn’t hang out in a bad crowd – like the ones who did drugs.

Lyons had a high IQ, but a brain that raced all the time. He recalled a note from a teacher to his parents: “He won’t stop talking in class and he won’t stop tapping his pencil.” Anxiety – really Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder -- was his constant companion.

To quiet it, Lyons turned to heroin, beginning his freshman year. “The heroin was what I was addicted to, he said, because that’s when I felt normal.”

He had few choices: short-term detox or a nine-month lockdown.

Chris Lyons missed his high school graduation, but the worst was just ahead.

In order to get drugs, he needed money. Getting that money led him to theft, to burglary, to receiving stolen property.

And eventually, he racked up so many cases, the judicial system ran out of choices. He was sent to the Noble Correctional Institution in Caldwell for three years. The first week he was there, there was a riot.

At that time, Noble didn’t have much in the way of programming or counseling or help. Not surprisingly, without support, Lyons served his sentence, got out, reoffended, and went right back to Noble.

The second time around, things were different. Lyons took advantage of the help Noble now offered, stayed out of trouble and got a transfer to the Grafton Correctional Facility.

And just like that, life started to turn around. Down time, which had always been a problem for Lyons, was replaced with training therapy dogs, with tutoring fellow offenders for their General Equivalency Exam, with teaching music.

And he found a way into college, via Ashland University’s Correctional Educational program. By 2018, he’d received an associate’s degree and in 2021 completed his bachelor’s degree. Lyons was hungry to learn, to understand himself and to prepare for a life beyond incarceration.

“The classes were great,” he said, and the instructors responsive, friendly and caring. “Whenever you’d ask a question,” Lyons said, “they’d get right back to you.” One professor offered daily updates of her life on a farm.

Lyons worked and worked, for himself and for others. By spring, he’d earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies with a double minor in sociology and business administration. And when he attended AU’s commencement ceremony, he said, the best part was “it was good to hang out with people who were other graduates” and not have to answer questions about how he got there.

So, it’s off to graduate school in a few months. Lyons will be supported by not only his parents, but by Harley, whom he married in September 2020, and stepdaughters Lyra and Luna. Ideally, Lyons said, he’d like to become a licensed counselor, open his own practice and “get involved in re-entry” services for those returning to the community after serving prison or jail sentences. He’s occasionally reminded that even though he is a changed man, he’s still a felon, with all the issues that come with that.

All the more reason to help those who are going through what he went through. “Now,” he said, “I can start planning. Before it was just get through the day.”

Ashland University is a mid-sized, private university conveniently located a short distance from Akron, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Ashland University (www.ashland.edu) offers each of its student constituencies The Ashland Promise, including “teaching students how to think, not what to think”. Committed to affordability, the University now offers incoming residential freshman the Tuition Relief Scholarship, as well as a variety of new forms of financial assistance for both new and continuing students. ###