LAS VEGAS � At the 2017 NAB Show Technology Luncheon, John Lyons was recognized as the recipient of the 2017 NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award. John Kean and Catherine Badalemente were also recognized and delivered speeches.
If you couldn’t attend the event in Las Vegas, read the full text of Lyons� acceptance speech here.�
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Thank you very much, Sam, and thank you to the NAB awards committee. �I am honored to be recognized this year as the Television Achievement Award Honoree. Let me begin with a thank you to my wife Natasha and sons Matthew and Constantine for your love and understanding while dealing with the sometimes crazy schedules and time consuming projects.
My career in broadcasting covers over fifty years and started in my junior year at Brooklyn Technical High School, where, as part of the electronics course of study, we were required to obtain at least an FCC Second Class Radio Operators License.�
What that school gave me so many years ago was the foundation and the discipline to become an achiever and that is something that I have never forgotten. �From that foundation, I learned to think for myself and while I made mistakes along the way, they never deterred me from thinking positive and, while at times some doors closed behind me, others opened. �
I have always tried to pay it forward, not only helping younger aspiring engineers, but also giving back to our industry, to education and to charitable causes. �I have served on the SBE board of directors and its original certification committee, as National president of the Veteran�s Hospital Radio and Television Guild and on the NAB�s Broadcast Conference Committee. �I presently serve as a founding board member of Gatewave, the Radio Reading Project for the Blind and Visually Impaired, as Vice President of AFCCE, and on the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation Board, �previously serving as its President and Chairman.
For the last several years I have worked on developing the new One World Trade Center into THE premier broadcast facility. My focus has been on both bringing the very best that I can to the industry that has provided for me and my family for over five decades but also bringing interoperable communications into the twenty-first century for first responders who still sorely lack them even to this day almost sixteen years after that tragic September day in 2001.�
I am honored to receive this prestigious award from my peers and thank all of you for sharing your experiences with me for these many years. �And never forget to take the opportunity to pay-it-forward to any young persons who express an interest in our great telecommunications industry.
Thank you!
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