Biography
Mary Lyons was a history teacher, mother of five, and grandmother from Hartford, Connecticut. She testified at the AVCO trial about her religious and moral reasoning for entering the plant. No further sourceable biographical detail was found.
AVCO arrest date
The AVCO arrest and initial detention occurred July 14, 1983, not July 13. Contemporary UPI reporting identifies the participants and arrest that day; Bauerlein’s own account confirms the date and jailing later that day. Her account describes initial bail release and later detention after conviction, so no final release date or continuous arrest-to-release span is inferred.
Sources: UPI, July 14, 1983; Agnes Bauerlein’s 1987 testimony, reproduced by her son.
Initial AVCO release established
The original Nuclear Resister 19, August 23, 1983, page 1 names Mary Lyons and dates the seven defendants' recognizance release July 22. This is the initial stay, not a later sentence discharge. Her individually documented total remains unknown. Contemporary report. The archive identifies her trial testimony at 11:52, but its footage requires licensing; no still has been copied. Film archive.
Separate December 1983 AVCO detention
The original February 12, 1984 Nuclear Resister, physical page 6 / printed page 5, AVCO Plowshares Guilty, individually names all seven defendants. It reports their December 16, 1983 conviction, sentence, immediate jailing and release later that same day pending appeal. This short post-verdict interval is recorded separately from July 14–22, 1983; the intervening period is not counted as incarceration. Concurrent versus consecutive terms depended on prior records and is not individually assigned without evidence.
The report also distinguishes the December 20 return of John Pendleton and Jean Holladay. That later imprisonment is not assigned to the other five. The contemporaneous report confirms Pendleton's February 6 release but only forecasts Holladay's early-March release, which must not be entered as an exact actual discharge.
