Esther Lyman
2020 Inducted into the New England LMSC Hall of Fame (Contributor)
2012 USMS Rule Book Dedication
2002 USMS Dorothy Donnelly Service Award
2000-2011 USMS Database Administrator
1998 Created the first-ever NE LCM All-Time Top Ten
1998 Created the first-ever NE 1-Hour Swim All-Time list
1996-2000 NELMSC Top Ten Recorder
1991-1996 NEM Executive Committee
1985-1991 NEM Information Chair
1983 June NEM News Esther Lyman – Living Proof That Still Waters Run Deep
1981-1984 NEM Secretary (Meet Results)
USMS Records
Pool – 1 lifetime relay
USMS Top Ten – 5 individual, 1 relay
Club: New England Masters (NEM)
Over the years, Esther volunteered for a number of positions that involved rather tedious responsibilities at both the club and regional levels: New England Masters and New England Local Masters Swimming Committee, including repairing our Top 10 list for short course yards, creating an All-Time Top 10 list for long course meters and the 1-Hour Swim. She served for several years as an assistant to Tom Lyndon, NEM News editor, and also as the vice chair of the LMSC. In each of these positions, she brought her usual thoroughness to the task at hand, becoming expert on each of the responsibilities and then smartly finding someone qualified to take over.
In 1999, with USMS membership at 38,000, Tracy Grilli was given the additional responsibility of bringing the USMS membership registration process in house. She needed to hire a database administrator and the first person she thought of was Esther. Tracy knew Esther would be perfect. When she contacted Esther to ask if she would be interested, she thought about it for a moment and said, “Yes, I think I would like to do this.”
USMS couldn’t have hired a better person. Over the next 10 years, as the USMS membership grew to over 55,000, Esther was hard-working, meticulous, patient, flexible and very knowledgeable when it came to the management of data. If there was something she didn’t know, she researched to find the answer. If something didn’t look quite right or she thought there was a better way of doing it, she experimented until she figured it out.
Esther definitely understood the importance of the information she maintained, what its potential uses were, and why it had to be up-to-date, correct, and available. She took tremendous pride in her work and was very much appreciated by our members, local registrars, committees, and Board of Directors.
After the first year, Esther wrote, “It took a great deal of courage all around to strike into this unknown territory—bringing the function in house—but we all survived and can all take credit that the results speak for themselves, including all the registrars who have given patiently of their time and effort and all deserve a medal! Not all gold, but no DQs either.”
Profiling Esther Lyman, USMS Website July 19, 2000
New England Master Esther Lyman of Londonderry, N.H., lives by her credo, ‘whatever direction you take in life, be excellent at what you do.’ Faithfully following that credo, Esther has been of enormous benefit to many organizations and activities—none more so than her favorite—Masters swimming.
Esther joined New England Masters late in 1974, worked out three to four times a week and took part in several meets a month. Her NEM swimming career produced the usual bouquet of blue, red, and yellow ribbons and medals. However, Esther's attitude was, ‘it isn't whether you win or lose, it’s whether you show up.’ She soon started giving back to the sport, becoming assistant to then newsletter editor Jim Edwards and was club secretary for a term. During this period, she worked 48 hours a week, raised three teenagers, and earned a B.S. with high honors in computer science. In 1984, she went to work for a major computer firm.
Raised in Denmark, Esther’s introduction to swimming was in the salty, pungent waters of Copenhagen Harbor. After marriage to a U.S. serviceman in 1954 when she was pursuing a career in language translation, she relocated to the United States, raising her children intermittent with leadership in Girl Scouting and teaching adult and pre-school swimming at the YWCA in Nashua, N.H.
Esther took over New England Top Ten Times at a time when several people had been trying to patch it back together. After bringing the job "up to snuff" she continued to maintain Short Course Yards. She then searched back to 1972, "an utterly tedious and time-consuming job" to create an All-Time Top Ten for Long Course Meters and then an All-Time New England list for the One-Hour Swim. Fellow NEM Ed Gendreau took on the task for Short Course Meters.
In mid-1998, the New England LMSC needed a major tune-up. The interim chair, John Woods of Maine, asked Esther to serve as New England's first vice chair. She brought her usual thoroughness to the task, becoming expert on each of the LMSC's areas of responsibility. She suggested excellent candidates to fill vacancies that occurred, solving problems and offering suggestions. Feeling her mission as vice chair accomplished, Esther returned to her Top Ten responsibilities. The minutes of October 1998 Annual Meeting noted special thanks to Esther Lyman for invaluable services during this transition.
For her Top Ten endeavors, Esther created a database to store all old times, into which meet results could be added electronically. It contains the current personal best times of all swimmers, and the current Top Ten line-up. It can automatically identify and qualify times for submission for national Top Ten. Times for New England swimmers are electronically downloaded from national results. New national and world records are added to the database as an upper limit for comparison, and prior years' top ten last places as a lower limit. The database does most of the selecting once the times are in the system. It can provide similar services to individual clubs such as Maine Masters.
In her spare time Esther has been working with Carl House and others on the National Archives project. The goal is to identify birthdates and club affiliations from early Top Ten and All-Americans, and to develop a permanent type of identifier for all swimmers to unify each swimmer's data and help with "quality control" of the web pages.
Masters swimming continues its phenomenal growth because the Esther Lymans ‘just show up’ and are excellent in what they do.
2012 USMS Rule Book Dedication
From repairing her LMSC’s Top 10 list to being the USMS membership database administrator, Esther brought her usual thoroughness to the task. She often became an expert on each of the responsibilities and then smartly found someone qualified to take over. Over the years. Esther volunteered for a number of positions that involved rather ‘tedious’ responsibilities.
Esther was hard-working, meticulous, patient, flexible, and very knowledgeable when it came to the management of data. She took tremendous pride in her work and was very much appreciated by member, local registrars, committees, and the Board of Directors.
After the first year as the membership database administrator, Esther wrote, “It took a great deal of courage all around to strike into this unknown territory—bringing the function in house—but we all survived and can all take credit that the results speak for themselves, including all the registrars who have given patiently of their time and effort and all deserve a medal: Not all gold, but no DQs either.”