By AIA Maryland
Sadly, we lost a long-time member and friend earlier this month. Lon Overton served as President of AIA Maryland and AIA Chesapeake Bay. Lon severed our profession in several capacities including AIA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Council, Maryland Department of General Services Architectural Review Board, Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission and the Historic Annapolis Architectural Committee. Below is a fond memory shared by John Corkill:
“Lon Overton was an American Original. Opinionated, forceful in his discourse, and fiercely loyal to his profession.
Lon was also a teacher, who taught design to, I believe, Maryland Art School, and possibly Anne Arundel Community College Architecture and Interior Design students. He had his own practice for many years just north of Annapolis and in later years held forth in his office with a constant visitor and friend, the late Paul Clarke, AIA, after Paul had retired from Colimore Clarke.
Lon had a vast memory of stories and tales about his adventures and was more than willing to share them.
Though a unique individual, Lon was nevertheless a stickler for professional manners and had high expectations of his fellow architects. Once at an AIAMD Annual meeting in a somewhat reverberant space that one of our leading firms had repurposed into an award-winning museum from a sewage treatment plant, the AIAMD President was attempting to make a speech to a big crowd of his colleagues. The President was being drowned out by all the chatter from his fellow architects, who were spending more time chatting than listening. Lon was outraged, and yelled out, loud and clear, “SHUT UP!! AND LISTEN TO ONE OF THE BEST OF US !!! The assembled architects sheepishly did just that. Lon had long been active in AIAMD in its early days and would not permit its rituals to be demeaned. While his strong opinions could be off-putting to some, our profession is surely diminished by his loss.”
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