WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — On an early morning coffee run in 1984, 25-year-old Sara Davis rounded one of the tight aisles in Evans Expressmart and walked right into a Hartford police officer.
“He said, ‘Hi,’ ” she remembered, laughing. And then, “What are you doing Saturday night?”
Davis — now Sara Lyman — can’t pinpoint what it was about Hartford police officer Tom Lyman that made her agree to that first date in 1984, but something clicked.
“I can’t describe it. He was just somebody that I wanted to spend more time with,” she said last week of the man who would go on to become her husband of 35 years.
That sentiment is shared by Lyman’s friends and former coworkers, many of whom have spent the past weeks remembering the father, friend, and 42-year veteran of the Hartford Police Department.
Lyman, who retired in 2017, died on April 4 at his home in West Hartford from cancer. He was 65.
“He was always a good person. He was a goofball,” Sara Lyman said. The two got engaged just three months after they met, and they were married less than a year later. They started with humble beginnings — a mobile home that Tom Lyman owned in Wilder — before building a house in 1986 on a piece of land on Wildlife Road that his grandfather used to own.
Sara Lyman remembers that move in with a laugh. She was pregnant, it was a
“We were looking around like ‘is there anything we can burn?’ ” she said. “We didn’t have a whole heck of a lot.”
But the house came together and the two settled into what Sara deems a “simple but honest life” with two children, Kylie and Kris.
Some things were not easy. As a patrolman and later, as a sergeant, Tom Lyman worked long hours. Holidays like Christmas occasionally had to be held late, and he would miss a few dinners because of his job.
There were times when she knew that a difficult case had taken a toll. He would be quieter than normal at the dinner table, or more reserved when he walked through the front door, but he wouldn’t let their children know it, Sara Lyman said.
“He never brought work home with him,” Sara said. “He was a great dad.”
As their kids grew, Tom Lyman would take them down to the brook behind their house and teach them how to fish. On spring and summer nights, he and his two young children would make the 20-yard trek across their yard, out to the sugar shack he built, to spend the night.
Hartford Police Sgt. Karl Ebbighausen, who knew Lyman for over 20 years, remembers building that sugar shack, which he deemed more like a “sugar house” that Lyman proudly kept “immaculate.” For hours in 1998, the two friends split beers and “swung some hammers” as they installed the roof over what would become a point of pride for the Vermont native.
When his son Kris got older, Tom Lyman taught him how to make maple syrup, Sara Lyman said. Every spring, the father and son would spend late nights in the sugar house, boiling down sap — a skill that had been in the Lyman family for generations. They would sell the syrup under the business name “Westwood Sugaring,” a nod to the woods where they spent those long spring nights, Sara Lyman said.
Lyman had, as Ebbighausen would attest, “The Vermont dream.”
But his love of Vermont went beyond his backyard; he had pride for his community as well, former Hartford police officer Chris O’Keefe said.
“Tom would get out of his car and do foot patrols downtown,” O’Keefe said. A rookie at the time, O’Keefe would watch his older colleague stop by businesses in White River Junction or chat with people on the street. “He would sit and talk to people. He had a rapport with everybody.”
One of those people, Norma Alley, remembers Lyman from the 1980s, when she said he was an active officer around the Hartford community. At night when she and friends were leaving a bar, she said Lyman always made sure they were safe.
“He never made us feel like we shouldn’t be out drinking and having fun,” she said. “He was friendly — not condescending or overly firm or stern.”
Hartford Police Major Brad Vail remembers the way Lyman made easy connections, too. After long night shifts together — during which he and Lyman would play practical jokes on each other and have long talks in the car — they would end work with a 5 a.m. coffee. Often, those coffees would be at the Polka Dot Diner, where Lyman became such a presence, they would sometimes open early, just for him, Vail said.
“Everyone in town knew him and loved him,” added Vail, who is now the deputy police chief.
And that respect trickled down to newer members of the department, too, Ebbighausen said. He remembered watching Lyman talk to people in the town. Some of them were wary of police, but after a conversation with Lyman they would become “best friends,” swapping stories about their families and even telling the officer some tips.
“I think the biggest thing I learned from Tom was how to interact with people,” Ebbighausen said. “How to do it fairly, how to do it enthusiastically.”
That’s why, when Lyman was diagnosed with cancer and decided — after undergoing chemotherapy — to stop his treatments, many members of the department wanted to give something back to the man who had taught them so much.
Two days before Lyman died, police officers from throughout the department and some who have since retired pulled their cruisers up the winding drive that led to his home and stepped out.
They stood in salute for 42 seconds — one for each year of Lyman’s career on the Hartford force.
Lyman was too sick to come and see the moment, but his daughter and wife took a video and showed it to him later, Sara Lyman said.
“He sat there and he said ‘Oh, beautiful,’ ” she remembered. “He said he was a part of something.”
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.