Candidate for
School Director; Great Valley School District; Region II; Republican, Democratic Party

Charles Russell Ashton Lyddane

Charles Lyddane was born in Dahlgren, Virginia. The youngest of four children he attended school at the Naval Proving Ground until fifth grade when his family relocated to Schenectady, New York. Continuing on in public school he graduated from Niskayuna High School and after a brief service in the US Marine Corps he went on to Union College. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and received honors on his Undergraduate Thesis in 1976. He also attended the Institute of Administration and Finance at Union College. Charles started his career at Honeywell in the Building Systems Division in System Sales. From there he continued on to Xerox and then to Merrill Lynch. At Merrill he was a Vice President and handled Investments and Public Finance clients. These included the financing of large hospitals, work with Wilmington Trust and Corporate Finance matters for Boston Edison. He concluded his career in Investments at Legg Mason managing up to $125 Million for private discretionary accounts. Lyddane joined Greg Walters in 2004 as Greg's partner in The Walters Company, a real estate development and investment firm with several Chester County holdings. He also acts as agent to one of the largest regional developers in the purchase of ground for specialized projects. He has lead or participated in many local and international service or mission projects. One of the first was to Co-Chair The ARC Building Committee with John Ciccarone to raise the funds for and construct the offices and school for ARC and their precious students on Lawrence Drive in West Goshen. This was followed by various projects with his church. Over the last 12 years he has been associated with the work of Dr. Michael Johnson with AIDS orphans in Africa and clinics the US. This included finding donations of $1.5 million dollars of medical equipment and supplies and shipping them to hospitals in Kenya, sending a medical library to one of Johnson's hospitals which Lyddane arranged to be donated by the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins. He and his wife also shipped 6,000 children's books which were donated by Sugartown Elementary School students and other parties to an orphanage and a school outside Nairobi. His trips to Africa, which he made, lead him to work with Johnson, Johnson's wife Kay and Paul Woodruff to build a large water project, dispensary and school in the area of Mwingi, Kenya. He and Woodruff raised $650,000 with the help of The Rotary Foundation, local Rotary Clubs and area churches. The project included training and empowering women, providing education to hundreds of children and helping to adopt orphans who were victims of the AIDS epidemic out of orphanages into good homes in Kenya. In addition, they provided clean drinking water to a large community. The latest project that Lyddane has undertaken is work on the Rotary Polio Plus Campaign to eradicate Polio worldwide. This effort is ongoing and a project of the WHO, the Rotary Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This work has taken him to Pakistan where he is also working on Project Rosebud, to provide tuition to schools for elementary age girls who would otherwise not be educated. This work is in concert with the US Agency for International Development and Rotary. He is married to Moreley Lyddane who has a Masters Degree in Special Education and works as a Teacher's Aide at Sugartown Elementary School. The Lyddanes have two adult daughters both of whom graduated from Great Valley High School, both have graduated from college and have successful careers. The Lyddanes hope their daughters will eventually become residents of the district and raise their families here. They have traveled extensively and continue to do so. They have visited 23 countries including China, Russia, Turkey and Pakistan. Other interests include movies, gardening, reading, cooking, wine and charitable work.