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Ron Lee

Date: November 16, 2022
Interviewer: Yvonne Kwan, Ellina Yin, and Vickie Taketa
Interviewee: Ron Lee (1945 - )

Ron Lee is a retired educator and scientist. During his time as a printmaker, he worked alongside other community advocates to raise awareness about Asian American community issues.

Transcript of Ron Lee

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Narrative & Identity Timeframe 0:00 >> 1:19

Sure. It's Ronald David Lee. And my birth date is March 8, 1945, and I was born in San Francisco. Oh, that is a bit of a story. My parents named me Ronald Lee. And the way David came up was there were something on the order of five or six. Ronald Lee's in Chinatown, and I was sort of a quiet fellow. I went to Galileo High School to register, but I actually ended up at Washington High School because my family was moving. And so the registrar says, “Which Ronald Lee are you?” And I look at the list and it says, Ronald Ailey, Ronald B Lee, Ronald C Lee, Ronald E Lee. And I think it was Ronald F Lee. So I said, I'm Ronald D Lee. And then and then the registrar says, “Well, what does a D stand for?” And I'm like, “David”. And so it was until years later, when I graduated from high school, my mother was outraged because she got my diploma in the mail and it said Ronald David Lee. And she said, I never named you David. What is this? I had to tell her the story, but it's a legal name. My mom did something to register it as Ronald David Lee. So that's my legal name.

(Interviewer) So you named yourself?

Yeah. Yeah.

Systems & Power Timeframe 1:19 >> 6:02

(Interviewer) Do you have any siblings or what is their birth order?

I have an older brother who has since died and he was three years older than I.

(Interviewer) And so was he also born in San Francisco?

Yes, he was.

(Interviewer) And your father's name? Place of birth and date of birth?

Well, he was his name is Harry Pang Lee. And his date of birth was that's a little bit unclear. His is listed date of birth. It was January 9th, 1913, but he was what is known as a paper son. So he came up the immigrated here under someone else's identity. And the village he was from was called [Chinese], Iron Stove Mountain in Toisan. He he didn't get much schooling. He was he probably got as far as eighth grade, but he trained as a cook. So his whole career was either cooking in restaurants or he had a couple of stints as a restaurant owner. But he was always in the he was always in the back. He was always a chef or a cook. His family, they were they were a military family. They were concerned about him and or him getting kidnaped. So they arranged to buy some papers from someone in the same village and sent him over. So, you know, my father's only unhappiness. It wasn't unhappy. But what happened is his papers described him as younger than he actually was. And he didn't like that because when it came time to get Social Security, he had turned 65 and he said, Oh, I've got to wait three years because that's my my paper birth date.

His family were in the cigar manufacturing business, so they had lots of relatives actually here and in Cuba, of all places. So the the identity that he bought or his family bought with someone that was related to him, but it wasn't him. Because of limited education, he didn't have very many places to go. You know, he had to basically stay in Chinatown, notwithstanding the fact that he was his paper son, and he just got a job at a restaurant, started cooking, and then eventually became pretty adept at cooking. Then eventually he went to work in some American type restaurants where he was a short order cook downtown. And in between stints as being a cook, he acquired and operated some restaurants. He acquired a restaurant called Acme Cafe downtown, and he operated that for a while. And for a number of years, he operated a restaurant in Chinatown on a place street. The original name of the restaurant is To Yun, but he he renamed the restaurant San To Yun, and he was there for quite a few years.

I don't know if you've gone through Chinatown, but it was one of these, for want of a better description, is one of these divey restaurants where it's off the street, but you have to go down stairs and then in and it was a very, very old restaurant. It had marble tabletops and the marble had been there so long that it was it was worn down like this from, you know, serving so but eventually, his, the most economically the best thing for him to do was to work at a restaurant. So in his day, if you went to the back of a restaurant, some very nice restaurants, particularly Italian restaurants. If you go these days, they're primarily Latino, Hispanic folks. But in those days when my dad was working, they were primarily Chinese folks. So the story is he was an excellent Italian cook. He could cook Italian dishes, so he made a lot of Italian dishes for family gatherings and things.

Timeframe 6:02 >> 8:11

(Interviewer) Did he ever teach you?

No, I never learned to cook for two reasons. My my father and my mother to some extent, you know, they did all the cooking. Okay. And I think you can tell from Lucretia, there's not much need for me to cook. So. So I will cook on occasion. When Lucretia was working, I cooked more often. But now she has this big new kitchen. She. She likes to cook. I would if she asked me, but she never asked. That's fine with me.

(Interviewer) Oh, and then one last thing is that, was your father born as Henry Pang Lee, or was that the paper son name?

You know, his Chinese name was Lei Jing Lui, and I never I never got the details. Lei was Li, of course, but his his last name, Jing Lui or his is given name has some meaning in, in the family culture. The fact that he's named Jing Lui, other relatives could identify actually what generation he was in. So there were some some real relatives, I'm sure, you know, if you have the relative that was a was a paper son, we'd walk through Chinatown. My dad would say, oh, these are your cousins, but they're not really your cousins. Okay? But these people are really your cousins. And and there were a couple of people who had the same Lui at the end of their name. But there was one I remember was called Ngoc Lui and that identified him as a generation previous to my dad. And so the fact that he was a Jing Lui a identified him to other relatives from the village where he was in, you know, in the hierarchy.

(Interviewer) And then did you get a Chinese name?

Yeah, mine is. My dad gave it to me. It's Lei Wai Mun. It translates into leader of men.

Joy & Cultural Resistence Timeframe 8:11 >> 12:51

(Interviewer) Could you state your mother's name, place of birth and around date of birth?

Yes. Her name is Lim Kim Lenny Lee, but her maiden name was Chow, C-H-O-W. She was born in 1923 at the Chinese hospital in San Francisco. It took her long time to get educated, but eventually she became a teacher. She went to UC Berkeley, got a bachelor's degree there, and then a teaching credential there as well. And a master's degree from University of San Francisco.

(Interviewer) Was that also in teaching?

Yes, it was teaching here. She she actually, in typical Chinese fashion, I suppose she wanted to be a doctor and her grades and everything were excellent. But she started school very late, and she actually was admitted to a medical school. But it was in Pennsylvania. And she she started there, but it became too much of a financial and distance burden, I suppose, is were I say my brother and I weren't the most well-behaved young boys. So she and my father was kind of a quiet fellow. So my mom had to come back and take care of business.

(Interviewer) Well, so it was you, your brother and your father living in San Francisco?

She was there just a few months. And then she came back.

(Interviewer) And did she ever kind of think about what life might have been like or any of that ever come up?

No, not really. I would have to say that, you know, going to medical school was kind of a cultural thing for Asian people. I don't know. It's the same for you. My mother wanted me to go to medical school and I did the same thing. I, I started medical school in Southern California. And Lucretia is the one who mentioned to me at one point, she says, you'd make a terrible doctor. Why are you going to medical school? So I, I said, you know, you're right. So I left, but I didn't last the year. So so there was no there was no regret there. She actually, before teaching, became a very successful real estate agent, she was a very good real estate agent that last for not too long, two or three years. And then she went into teaching. But, you know, she acquired some property that our family still holds. It's a nice property. And she, she…I'm not quite sure how she decided to become a teacher, although I know that she. She liked the teaching schedule. There was a time when she was a teacher. I wish it were the case now that being a teacher was a very nice profession. And the reason for that was the salary was okay. But teachers could travel. And this back in the seventies I suppose maybe that's yeah. In the seventies and it later on this perk was taken away but one could travel and receive credits for doing a travel by coming back from the travel and writing a little report. So my father and mother traveled a lot during the summers as an example. She went to China eight times, and they traveled all over the United States. And one of the boons that my father provided actually was eventually he worked at that time for the Saint Francis Hotel, which was part of a chain of hotels. So they could go to almost any large city, virtually in the world. And the tradition was, if you were part of that union, they treated you really well. So, you know, they'd go to New York or something and they would be treated really well because they the workers there knew that my father was part of the union, and then they would reciprocate if they came to San Francisco. So they they they had a nice time traveling. And my father was a bit older than my mom. He was he was 15 years older. So there came a point when he actually sort of retired, I think. But, you know, my mom's teacher schedule was pretty flexible, and they would take trips.

Timeframe 12:51 >> 14:12

Oh, my brother and I were typical Chinese children. They would say, my mom and dad would say, okay, go down to Chinatown, hang out. Don't do anything to embarrass us. That was what my mother would say. My father would say, so we'd go down Chinatown hangout. There was actually very little time because besides the regular school, which lasts till perhaps 3:00, we went to Chinese school, which lasted from about 5 to 7. So we were we were in school for a pretty long time during the day. The other thing is in Chinatown, children at that time generally belonged to, for want of a better description, a kind of community center. They were generally related to churches. They were like church missions. So they're the one I went to the most was called Cameron House. And but there were there was a similar facility at the YMCA. There was a church, a Baptist church in Chinatown that was next to the Chinese playground. There was a Chinese recreation center. So kids joined groups and I would have been known as a Cameron house kid.

Joy & Cultural Resistence Timeframe 14:12 >> 22:22

Oh, my mother. Well, if you need to edit this out, I can I'll show you a biography. I wrote her and the title of the her biography is “Bad Ass.” My mom was a bad ass, okay? And she quarreled constantly with my grandmother. And the problem was they were from a very indigent family. They were they were poor. And my grandfather was often away. He would disappear for months at a time. There's a story about that. So they would argue quite a bit. What happened is at one point it was a night, I think it was 1936. I think as is typical of that age, my grandmother set my mom to work for a Caucasian family up the hill, Nob Hill and she was, you know, just a domestic. And at one point, my grandmother offered to sell my mom to this family, which was not an uncommon practice, but she needed the money. Like I said, my mom as a kid wasn't particularly well-behaved. Okay. Or at least, you know, a typical young Chinese girl. So my mom went to this place, and in this place was another domestic, a Eurasian woman, older, who was basically, according to my mom, the child of a prostitute and a Caucasian John. And those those people were real pariahs. So she apparently had been sold to this family as well. And her job was to train my mom how to how to do things. And at one point, the the older domestic says to Lenny that, well, you know, you shouldn't do this. And she would she could recognize that my mom was very intelligent and very outspoken, you know, very, very dynamic. So she said, you shouldn't let your moms sell you to this lady. So my mom went home and refused to go, and my grandmother was outraged. Okay. Because not only did she not get money, but she you know, she was outraged that her daughter would oldest daughter would, you know, not follow her wishes. Well, they argued for several years.

And at this point, Lenny, my mom, it's 1939. My mom becomes is 16. And when I write about her, this literally is true. There are reasons people get saved from oblivion. But her what saved her was she was beautiful. I have pictures. She was just a beautiful woman. And she got a job at the 1939 World's Fair, just dressing in exotic dresses and handing out little, little Chinese favors. And so she made actually a fair amount of money just in tips. And so things got better with my grandmother when my mom started bringing money home you know. Then eventually she met my dad, who was a bartender, then 15 years older. Now that sounds like a recipe for disaster, this 15 [31]-year-old guy, you know, hitting on a 16-year-old girl. But it turned out fine. They got married. They had my brother when my mom was 18. And then she had they had me when she was 21. And that's 1945. And you would think that's a recipe for disaster, you know, because of the scenario. But it turns out to have been a perfect scenario for Lenny and my father as well.

And a reason for that was because my father was a paper son. He wasn't very outspoken. He'd sit in the background, they'd go to Chinatown and they had a social club and stuff. He'd sit with his friends who are endowed, didn't. He were also paper sons, and they would reminisce. And my mom would, you know, be free to talk and do whatever she wanted. And at that point, she had only had, I think, a ninth-grade education. But then she started on a track which led her all the way to USF’s master's degree. What happened was she finished high school at a school called Drew School in San Francisco. D-R-E-W where was a private school where you could work at your own pace. So she she finished high school in a year. So she went from ninth grade to 12th grade and beyond and a year then went to City College in San Francisco and then transferred to Cal, and we lived in what you would call matriarchal family, which was very unusual in Chinatown. You know, the men would always be the ones in charge and the great boon that she received from my father is my father said, okay, go for it, I'll just work. And you my paycheck, you do what you need to do and so he was very proud of her, of course. And, you know, so she went to Cal. And actually, as a result, my father and I didn't communicate much. But he he once mentioned to me that, you know, California was called Gold Mountain. And he really liked the fact that, you see, Berkeley was the golden bear.

So in our family, between my brother and I, I would see between my my brother and I, my cousins, there are maybe a dozen Cal grads. I'm joking. Meredith, I'm talking to Meredith. Meredith went to UCLA. We forgive her, but she went to UCLA. And my older my younger daughter went to UC Santa Cruz. And we forgive you, too, Allison. But but Meredith is now at Haas School of Business, so she's going to be an old blue too. Allison, um, for want of a better description, Allison has the same personality as my mom. She might be a badass, too. Sorry, Allison. So I neither a daughter I can really…If I wanted to do something, I wouldn't tell them. I would just hope that they would come to the conclusion themselves that this is what they ought to do. See, I graduated from Cal in 1966 and she had proudly graduated. I'd have to look, but it was probably 1959 or something like that. And then she went to graduate school and didn't start teaching. Oh, I remember this well. She didn't start teaching till 1962. And the reason I remember that well is I was at Washington High School in 1961. That's where Connie Young Yu and and Allan Seid went. But they were there before me. And the problem with going to Washington High School was my mom's student taught in 1961 at Washington High School, she was student teaching chemistry. And she happened to ask my chemistry teacher how I was doing. And the chemistry teacher says, well, your son doesn't turn his homework in. So then I got in a lot of trouble that you know that. So I remember she started student teaching in 61 and taught and started teaching career 62 or so.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 22:22 >> 32:44

Oh, okay. Well, I will show you later. My mom passed away last November, and in the course of going through her effects, my nephew discovered a book she had written. It's there. I could show it to you later and my my nephew says, Uncle Ron, look, look at this book and look at the first page. And so I hadn't read the whole book at the time, but the first page was a revelation. It was a real adventure story. And my nephew said, “Oh, the stories read just like Warrior.” We're familiar with Warrior, but it's a Netflix series based on some work or some treatments by Bruce Lee and then her his daughter created. And I hadn't seen it, but my, my nephew said, well, these stories are just like something right out of Warrior. So I looked at it and I, I concluded, yeah, you know, these, these stories are just like warrior. But in one paragraph, on page two, she mentioned China Beach and that my, my family, my great uncle and great great uncles. Plus my grandfather would sail to China Beach. Now, as a way of explanation, I looked up China Beach at the time, and I discovered two things that piqued my curiosity. The first was at the National Park Service's website. It's a national Parks or Golden Gate Recreation Area area described that there was no evidence of Chinese people having ever camped on China Beach and then a very prominent family, they still live in this area. It's an area called Seacliff. The homes run 20 to $25 million. And this family were a very successful family of restauranteurs.

They had erected a monument there. And to me, the monument was wrong. It said that Chinese people had camped on the beach, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the fishermen who camped here because they supply foodstuffs all over San Francisco. And I knew that wasn't true for a couple of reasons. One, the website says no one ever camped on China Beach. Two, you probably know the history better night, but there were laws and ordinances that forbid people from Chinese people from ever fishing in that area. So I know whether, you know, nobody was fishing there or at least if they were fishing there, they were doing it surreptitiously, surreptitiously. But my mom described something which made some sense. And the sense of that was my grandmother's family. They were their surnames were Ng. They were in what's called a “jup guwat” [bone collecting] business. They they they took care of funerals for sojourners, as they were called. And they happened to die. They would bury the remains for a period of ten years, dig them up and then sail them back. They didn't do that for just anybody. They were from a village called Quang Hoi or Quang Quang Hai, I think it's called now. So they my they had a society, the Ng society took care of Ng sea, seafarers. Now what happens as it turns out that in the north, northwest corner of San Francisco, there's a golf course. It's called Lincoln Park Golf Course. But before that, Lincoln Park golf course was a cemetery. And so my Ng relatives were in a funeral business.

And in 1968, they were directed to move all of the bodies they were holding for a ten-year period to what is now Lincoln Park Golf Course. So they would then after a period of time, this is the late 1890s. By then what they would do is they would sail to the cove at China Beach, disembark, go up the hill, the cemetery, dig up the bodies, bring them back down to the boat, and then tell their Chinese junks directly to China to return them. So there are a couple of reasons that I'm sure nobody got off at the beach. Number one is that it was private property. And then in what I call real irony, the beach was called, was it? Before it was called China Beach or it was called China Beach. Then eventually it changed hands. And I don't know, these folks owned it, but they became known as Phelan Beach and James Phelan is one of the most notorious xenophobes and racists in California history. And the irony of this is that he's the one that provided the funds to acquire this beach. Now the National Park Service, in their wisdom, renamed the beach, and I believe it was 1930. I'm not sure about that date. They renamed it the China Beach, but at the time they said we didn't we don't know why it's called China Beach.

And so I wrote the National Park Service and said, well, here's a story. My great great grand uncles and my grandfather would anchor off China Beach and pick up bodies. And then one great great grandfather was a fisherman. And although you couldn't fish in the North Bay, he was a shelf. He he collected shellfish, shrimps. And what he would do is he would anchor off of what is now called China Beach and collect abalone there. And, you know, after he collected the abalone, he would sail to Pacific Grove where there was a large Chinese fishing community. And I believe he traded things like shrimp and shellfish for a squid, which was the main thing they collected in Pacific Grove. And then he would I would I would venture to guess, although I don't have his document, I would venture to guess my relatives sailed back and forth to China at least once a year. And what they did was they brought back the dried squid and then they would pick up things like Chinese cooking utensils to bring back one of the routes, one of the safe routes to go back to America was actually a sail to South Sea Islands. So they had some relatives there. They would pick up things like dried shark fins and things. Then sail back to America. But their I forgotten, their main commodity was that in their village, the relative, they were shipwrights they made, you know, they built boats, but they also built coffins. So they my ancestors picked up these coffins and sailed them back to America to sell to various funeral homes. And I don't know that they actually used the coffins themselves, but they they had a big they had a big business selling coffins.

And the first page of the book has a story about how that became a problem. I characterized my mom as a bad ass, my my other relatives. The book I write their chapter is title scofflaws. They, they, they, they circumvented almost all the laws that were passed in San Francisco a lot of Chinese people tried to get along or went to the courts and everything. And I would I like the word scofflaws because I don't think of them as criminals. I think by my ancestors is saying how they making all these crazy laws and I'm not following any of these laws. So we you know, and as an example, to exhume a body at that time, the city charged $10.50 if you want it, if you're bringing it back to China, if you want it to just exhume it, to bring down a coal mine where all the cemeteries are now, was $2.50. So this is at a time when the average wage for Chinese laborers $0.13 an hour. So I it's not a document, but what I know I can envision my relatives saying, oh, no, we're not paying $10.50 to take this. We'll just go up there at night, dig stuff up, and then from there just sail directly to China. So they did a lot of things where they didn't pay fees like, you know, similar to what the miner’s tax was, but they were never miners. But they, you know, you know, they there were charges for having a queue. They were just all sorts of charges. And my my feeling, by the way, is that the Chinese in Chinatown, in this era, which was the latter half of the 19th century, they were very, to me, a large economic engine to San Francisco. I mean, they paid the fees, the laundry men paid the fees. You know, the cigar makers paid the fees. Everybody paid the fees. Except that my my uncles and grandfather didn't pay fees.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 32:44 >> 36:42

(Interviewer) Do you know how long it took to sail back to China? It's like looking at a map, like. Is that across the sea?

Yeah. By direct sailing, by steamship, it would have taken something on the order of 6 to 8 weeks. But what my family did was they took a period of months. And a reason for that, as I said, was they they were traders as well as seafarers. They would trade they would travel to the South Pacific Islands and bring goods to sell and and then travel. So their their voyages lasted probably similar direct sailing from here back to China was probably on the order of two months, as I recall, from my mom's work. But coming back it was maybe about a six-month journey.

(Interviewer) And this is just through celestial navigation?

Yeah, a very interesting sidelight is one of the reasons they sailed through the South Seas was in the early 1800s. There was a lot of danger in sailing. You know, there was war. The the the the first opium war and that sort of thing. And there were five pirate fleets that sailed the South China Seas. And my mother described or my ancestor described to my mom how the largest fleet was something on the order of 800 ships and 180,000 pirates. And she told me that she gave me the name and she said this this pirate was very famous because she was a beautiful woman. So I, I look it up and I said, oh, holy cow, there’s this beautiful woman. There’s this pirate. And it was in the early 1800s. And there were some other woman pirates that my family encountered. And then they encountered British warships and stuff. So the safe thing to do was to kind of sail along the coast, past Macao and then south on to South Sea Islands and Guam. Quang Hoi is a situated actually south of Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. And that was by choice. They didn't want to sail past the Pearl River Delta because that was where all the pirates and the British warships and all those people were. But from their location, they could slip past all of this and then get to the South Seas.

But there is another lady pirate who came ashore at the at the village, and I think her name was Ying Don. And she was known as a one-eyed pirate. And as I said, there were five pirate fleets, and they came ashore and massacred my grandmother's family. My grandmother was small, but she my my mom says my grandmother had a picture which is long gone. But the stories, they rounded the village up in a pig pen and then chopped all their heads off. And how my mother, my grandmother escaped, I'm not sure, but she was very unhappy about that. As you could well believe so so yeah. So they're sailing ship sailing back here.

(Interviewer) Did any family ever settle on those islands as they were picking up?

I am I am told that they had some distant relatives who, you know, had I believe it was Fiji. They they they had migrated to Fiji. But there are no names and just a description of having gone to the South Sea Islands.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 36:42 >> 39:40

Oh, well, my parents, because they were so busy, really didn't think much about what I was doing or what I was up to. But I was genuinely a generally well-behaved and as I said, I spent a lot of time at a place called Cameron House, which had a lot of programs for young people. So I enjoyed that. It was a missionary school, so there was a bit of proselytizing, but that was the case in all all schools. For instance, I went to Chinese school at St Mary's Chinese School and then, you know, periodically we were doing we were doing Chinese, but we had to go to catechism class, you know, just went to academy class. So but there was always something to keep me busy in Chinatown. It never dawned on me to leave Chinatown. So, you know, I went to school on weekends. I went to Cameron House and and then I just went home.

Oh, so there were incidents. I mean, you know, we're living in a ghetto, actually. So the irony of this is I don't know that I was a bad ass, but I was this little guy that people wouldn't pick on my brother was a big guy. He was a real big guy. He he he didn't… he dropped out of the team before this happened. But when he went to City College, they had recruited him to the football team and. He was a fullback for O.J. Simpson. That was when he went to, but he didn't finish. But my I know for some reason somebody picked on me, but there were there were fights small. And I won't tell you who this is, but Lucretia [Lee] knows this person. This person pulled a gun on me, and I spent years in Chinatown trying to get that guy alone to just, you know, punch him out. But he he and I went in different circles. And as I said, I don't want to identify this person. But I can tell you the irony of this is he became a sheriff. It must have been in junior high school, you know, junior high. I wouldn't have been in high school because my family moved to the Richmond district. So I was maybe eighth grade or ninth grade or something like that. But, you know, many people have this story to tell. If you if you stood up for yourself, they didn't pick on you. My brother, who was big enough to crush any of these guys. I think my brother was 511 as a young man. He I think he was 5’11’’, 200-220. I mean, he was a full back. But his nickname was Bookworm. He just went around Chinatown reading books. And so people you could imagine would pick on him for doing that. And I used to ask Leonard and says, you know, he had to whack them once to leave you alone. And he would say, No, I don't want to do that. I'm okay. So I said, All right, if you're okay, I'm okay.

Timeframe 39:40 >> 45:58

(Interviewer) When you went to Chinese school, was it just to learn Chinese or was there like history or?

There was some history, but primarily Chinese school in the day was recitation, and the basic teaching procedure was the teacher would read from this book, and then as a class we would recite back and the tests would be that they would call on you, you'd stand up and recite. Now the majority of us, frankly, what we did was we didn't bother to learn this. We what we did was we wrote the words phonetically in English along the side of the papers. And then when it was time to recite it just stand up and recite. Back then my Chinese was a little better because I was raised by my grandmother first few years, and so I could get if you speak Chinese or, you know, back then I could get the right tone and inflection just by knowing, you know, what the phonetic spelling was today. If I tried to repeat Chinese, you know, I wouldn't be able to get the right tone and inflection. So people would laugh. But back then I was okay. I was good enough to pass. I wasn't a stellar student, but, you know, that was okay.

Virtually all of my friends were from Cameron House, okay? I mean, there were there was a club and were in this club and so forth. But an interesting story is that back in those days, the school was so crowded that classes were divided in the grades by grades. So there would be a what they call a high sixth grade and a low sixth grade. So when somebody came to enroll, they would divide classes. So first group would be designated the high group, which didn't have anything to do with their academic prowess. It just meant they were first in and then later on a second group would come and also enroll in the school. But the net effect of that was interesting for years. It doesn't happen now, but for years we would encounter people and we'd say, Well, they'd say, I went to Commodore Stockton and say, I want to come to Stockton. And they would say, Well, I don't remember you. And then I would say, Well, you know, in such such a year I was in the high six and then that person would say, Oh, I was in a low six, and we might be just two or three months apart age wise, that we would have never encountered each other. So, you know, my my family, I was I didn't have a lot of close friends. I had one friend whom I was good friends with, but I wasn't a very social character. It wasn't that I was unfriendly. I just didn't I guess because the way I was being raised, you know, on my own, I didn't see the need to have a lot of friends.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 45:58 >> 46:17

(Interviewer) Earlier you said that your Chinese is not very good because of probably not using it very often. I just wanted to get two clarification questions for at St Mary's, was it in Cantonese or Chinese or Mandarin or what language was that?

It would have been in Cantonese. Mandarin wasn't, you know, until a communist, I think arrived was Mandarin sort of the designated language. It would have been Cantonese, and it would have been what is called the “sam yup” [third region] dialect. And my family was “say yup” [fourth region], and that was just differences in dialects. But I to the best of my recollection, the Chinese classes were taught in, in the “sam yup” dialect.

(Interviewer) And that was there ever any desire for your mother to have you continue speaking in Cantonese or for your mother? Because we hear about the importance of language in it. Sometimes it gets a generation and then it comes back.

Oh, no, I don't know. This this terminology applies anywhere, but my mom and I used it. She described Chinese immigrants under either of two categories. One was that a person was a sojourner, and a sojourner was somebody who came from China, worked, sent money back home and decided that they were going to eventually return. The other designation was called “Jook Sing” and “Jook Sing” meant you got here, but you wanted to be Americanized. So my mom was very Americanized. My dad wasn't. But the whole objective at that point would have been for me to be what it was called “jook sing”, which it wasn't really a complimentary term. It meant, you know, people kind of look down on you because you didn't want to go home. But my mom very much wanted to be, you know, Americanized. She had no trace of an accent, although she could speak “sam yup”, “say yup” and Mandarin correctly. But she if you heard her speaking now, she would have no trace of an accent. And she wanted myself and my brother to be the same, you know, no trace of any accent. Although, you know, I lost the ability to speak Chinese. But there's there's a reason for that, too. I'm to my mom's great disappointment because she was almost tantamount to what we call today a dragon lady. She really wanted us to, you know, excel. But I was not bad. But I didn't even realize this until I became a teacher myself. I was ADD. I had attention deficit disorder. I didn't even realize that at the time. My mom and everybody would say, he seems to be smart, but he's kind of lazy and he doesn't pay attention. But it was just all a matter of, you know, ADD, a little Ritalin would have probably helped me back in the day. But, you know, there was no such thing in that at that time.

Timeframe 46:17 >> 56:40

None of us in our family ever watched much television. We didn't have a television until very late. In my interactions in Chinatown, my typical pattern in the day, back in the day was I mentioned sojourners. There's a sort of an analogy here. My family moves to the Richmond district, and I'm attending the school, which is probably 90 to 95% Caucasian and some some, some Chinese Americans thrived in that. Examples would be Allen Seid. Allen Seid was student body president; he's a couple of years older than I. But I can tell you that to become the student body president at Washington High School at that time was quite an achievement. I believe Connie Young Yu must have been a good student to a combination because of my ADD and actually mainly because I really like to play basketball. So the only only thing I was focusing on in high school was playing basketball. But I would have been by analogy, a sojourner. I would go to Washington, come home, stay at home. But every weekend I would return to Chinatown. That's where all my friends were. That's where Cameron House was and everything like that. So my my whole life revolved around being in Chinatown, not in the Richmond District.

(Interviewer) How would you say it in reflection, you know, not growing up with a lot of media interaction and then raising your daughters and obviously there's TV, there's all sorts of impact from what they're seeing on the screen. Did you see kind of how that might impact them or do they ever talk to you about it?

They do. And they they took different paths. My younger daughter once told us when she was little, says, I'm not Chinese and I didn't know how to explain to her. But when you look in the mirror, but she had all Caucasian friends and, you know, interact didn't have and I don't believe you could appreciate this I don't believe to this day she has an Asian friend. There were Asian students that she might have interacted with, but they were not really close friends. My older daughter, Meredith, and Vickie knows her was the complete opposite that siblings would be. She she was all in. But part of that was the fact that we always brought her to AACI meetings. We called her the AACI baby and she she she majored, I'm trying to remember this at UCLA, she had a double major, double minor. She majored in sociology and Asian American Studies. And then I forget what the minors were, but one of them was early childhood education, and there was something else. But she was all in and she was part of a generation, I think, prior to yours, which very much was affected by this this concept they called Asian pride. Are you familiar with the Asian Pride concept? And one of the driving things of that driving that funny word is at the time some movies came out and they called Fast and Furious.

Are you familiar with Fast and Furious? So my my daughter was into things Asian. She played basketball for JACL in a JACL basketball league. And I was telling Vickie, the JACL had I don't know if you know this, but there must be there must be a tremendous history about the JACL involvement in athletics, because they had a program which was just just really incredible. And it dated before the war and continues to this day. And so Meredith was part of that. If you look outside, when you leave, you'll see a purple car on the left, right side of the driveway. That is a Datsun 240-SX. And she bought that car because that was one of the feature cars in the first first Fast and Furious. And it was a very famous car, the race car, and this is what she wanted to change it into was called the Sylvia and the Sylvia was a very famous car for drifting. It had a five-speed transmission. It had a rear axle drive. So the other cars, Japanese cars had front wheel drive and weren't nearly as well regarded as that 240-SX. And I would say to this day, about every couple of months, a young man, usually it's a young man knocks on the door and says, “Would you like to sell that car?” And I used to play with him, but I don't play with him anymore. I would say, “How much do you want?” I said, I'll give you 1500 dollars and I know the history of the car. And I'd say, Oh heck, those are such and such wheels. Those wheels cost $2500. What do you mean? So? So I had a lot of fun with it after Meredith stopped driving that car. You know, we just just a lot of fun. It's pretty much stock now except for the wheels. But in her day, it was all lowered and it had these little things on it.

And oh, my. Meredith, after graduating from UCLA, moved to Hawaii. So When she moved to Hawaii, she left the car with us. But a funny side story is the car at the time is all lowered and, you know, just making a lot of noise. And and so I used to teach middle school and high school, and it got to a point where there were a group of kids, not necessarily Asian and lots of Hispanic kids. They would wait in the school parking lot. And so I came in because I'd come in and I'm roaring. And then, you know, schools have these bumps, so I have to go sideways to go over the bump and then slide down and go over. And then I'm driving the engine just to through these kids. And they they love that. They love that. And let me know if I'm taking up too much time. But there are some funny stories to the kids would ask me about that. And because of Lucretia, I knew some of the drift terminology. I knew what a Sylvia was. And, you know, a lot of kids would say, wow, you know what, a Sylvia is? And so so I use it as a teaching object lesson. I would say, okay, look, see if you can figure out whether or not Mr. Lee really drifts. Okay. And so they, you know, they come back and ask me a little questions. And I always had the answers. And I remember this distinctly. One day a Hispanic kid comes in the room, says, Mr. Lee really drifts. And the other kids said, How do you know? And he said, Well, he has a pipe on his on his console. And a lot of people don't know this, but people that drifted, they would have a pipe on the console. I knew about the pipe. I didn't use it. I just knew about the pipe. So I put it there and they would be done with the pipe as it would be put over the handle of the handbrake to get extra leverage. So when you're drifting, if you want to lock up the wheels, you have extra leverage. So you pull on this thing. So, you know that that that was I remember the thing that convinced them that I that I could drift that I, I don't drift and eventually I put the car back to completely stop. And, you know, I'm very, you know, modest driver. And one other funny story would be kids, you know, probably your age, maybe a little older, would ask me. I say, Mr. Lee, do you watch those Fast and Furious movies? And I would joke with them. I said, Yeah, I watched those movies. But in in my stories, the Asian guy always wins, okay? And they will laugh. But you know, that's that was my standard reply to kids that ask me about Fast and Furious.

So and the good thing about that was, you know, it motivated, I think. Vickie, were you her counselor or were you Allison's counselor? I forget that she had you know, they got… were you [Vickie] at the De Anza or at Foothill? So I don't recall how this was, but they you know, it, you know, it was it was good because neither a daughter was a maybe they inherited this for me that neither of them was a very stellar student, that when Meredith became a Asian [American] studies major, she became very serious. And so she went to UCLA and and my younger daughter is that for want of a better description among the four of us, my younger daughter, the smart one, she she graduated with honors from his in history and but she's kind of a non-conventional person you could tell if she went to UC Santa Cruz she doesn't really you know she she isn’t and a model minority.

Timeframe 56:40 >> 1:04:58

(Interviewer) Did you come to a better understanding of your maybe racial identity or your Chinese identity being outside of San Francisco?

I think about it now. I really didn't do much interaction in there. As I said, the main my main activity was playing basketball. And then eventually I had to leave the basketball team. I think I told you that story about me not doing my homework. So I don't know what I did after that, but I didn't interact very much with students at Washington, although in general, my recollection is that students themselves generally got along fine. You know, maybe I was just an outlier. I recall that when I went to Lucretia and I went to a reunion at at UC Berkeley, my best my best friend also went to Berkeley, and we met a guy who had gone to the same high school Caucasian guy. And and I remember he said, “Oh, you went to college? And I, you know, I didn't say anything, but, you know, I did. And in in the vernacular of a movie called Pretty Woman, they asked him, did you go to college? And he said, “Oh, I went all the way and I went all the way in college.” Didn't make use of it all, but I went all the way. So but again, none of that stuff ever really bothered me. Again, that's probably due to this sojourner thing. I mean, I was completely comfortable within my own identity. It didn't matter what this fellow said or what anybody said, I was always comfortable in my you know, with who I was. Thank you.

I started by going to the University of Oregon. And the reason I went to the University of Oregon was I wasn’t a particularly good high school student. One of the incidents, if you ask me about when you know, somebody picked on me, was a my homeroom teacher at Washington High School, held up my report card and he said, look, this guy is all C's. And so, you know, so, you know, at the time I'm proud thinking, well, I just got to hang in until basketball practice so it didn't really bother me. Second incident in high school was one of my teachers called me in with a paper I had written. He said, “You didn't write this.” And and I said, “No, yeah, I wrote it.” And he said, “Well, no Chinese kids can't write like this.” So, you know, and at the times, I'm not particularly interested in school. So, you know, I says, do what you want to do. But the biggest incident that occurred to me was, I don't know if still this is still the case, but in the junior year of high school, there's this this test you take, it's called the PSAT. It's a preliminary SAT. Okay. So I take that test and I get called in and I forget who was I think was a principal that maybe it was the vice principal. They said, you have the highest score in the PSAT of the whole school, but you're a C student. How did you do that? How did you cheat? They thought I cheated. And, you know, I didn't know how to explain to them, you know, especially they wondered about my math scores, and I don't know, I didn't say this to them, but I said, look, the teacher writes the stuff up on a blackboard. I get it. Then he wants us to do the same problem ten times at home. I didn't see the point in doing that.

So, you know, I just kind of a marginal student. Then in my senior year took the SAT tests and ironically and by the way, these days in S.A.T., a perfect score is probably routine. You probably Meredith was telling me that to go to UCLA, you needed a 4.36 or something. Okay. And I'm a straight C student at the time, and it was remarkable. And I remember taking this the SAT tests, getting to it, particularly the math section. I said, well, I better miss a couple of these questions because if I get another perfect score, they're going to call me in again. So I, I forget. I think 1600 was the high score. I score 1550 and they say, okay, that's okay, yeah, they're okay. That, you know, this guy took the test, but I couldn't get into Berkeley. But I wanted to leave home. I wanted to go to a four-year school. And the only school that would accept me was University of Oregon. But when I went to Oregon; I didn't really adapt well there, so I had to come back. I didn't even finish the year, but I finished a year at City College. And at that time, this is 1962, the entrance requirements to a U.C. were much, much less stringent, probably students. Now, Vickie, you wouldn't know who it would be jealous you needed a 2.4 GPA, or you needed to show that you had at least I think it was a 1200 score on the S.A.T. and that was a reason to admit. So I applied to Berkeley and I have this 1550 score, and so they let me in. So, so then I finished up there and graduated in 66, but, you know, I wasn't a particularly I still wasn't a particularly strong student, but, you know, at least I was able to get admitted.

My major was life sciences at the time. My my mother my whole family really just thinking, you know, it would be prestigious if a family member goes to medical school. That was kind of like the, you know, the epitome. So I wasn't particularly interested in school, but I knew that they wanted me to be a pre-med major. So so I did that. Then in terms of other schooling, I did a lot of schooling, but I think people of my generation would probably agree. I stayed in school. I stayed in school because it was the Vietnam era. And if you didn't go to school, the alternative was to go go in the army. And I think I told you in the last session by then, I'm madly in love with Lucretia. I don't I don't want to get drafted. So I. I stay in school and like I said, I stayed in school, went all the way, but only because there wasn't anything I was particularly interested in doing. Except I'll get to this. But I didn't want to go in the army. The one thing I didn't realize even at the time that I. I liked it was I like being a schoolteacher. I mean, there were lots of things I did in the business world and the scientific world and so forth. But the natural, the thing that I did naturally well was just to teach school, especially teaching middle school. And people would kind of marvel at that how well I did teaching middle school and how how well middle school kids actually liked me or like coming to my class because middle school was kind of a notorious age.

Timeframe 1:04:58 >> 1:10:33

(Interviewer) So going back to the Vietnam era, you were at a campus when all, all the isms were going, Mm hmm. Everything from environmentalism to, you know, racism to women's studies to, you know, social justice issues, freedoms. You were in the middle of it.

Yes and no. I am of an age where I actually predated a lot of these things. In fact, the big demonstration that was going on in Berkeley at the time was called the Free Speech Movement. There's a fellow named Mario Savio. He's famous for this. And, you know, as I look back upon pictures of that era, Mario Savio Savio was wearing a a suit and tie. He's wearing a sport coat and tie. And I got to thinking, okay, well, I thought this guy was a radical at the time, but it was interesting. I missed all of the things later. For instance, my cousin and I have friends who went to San Francisco State and San Francisco State was very there was really a lot of stuff going on. There was stuff going on at Cal, too. But maybe in terms of Asian awareness, I think San Francisco State was probably more attuned to that culture or to those issues than in Berkeley, where there was in Berkeley, there were a lot of protests, you know, tear gas, the whole thing. But it seemed to me, at least at the time, that the Asian American focus occurred more at San Francisco State. But Lucretia and I weren't involved in any of that. We had moved from Cal. I did what I would call years of social service. I joined a group, and this is President Johnson at the time. But at that time there were two groups there was the Peace Corps, and then there was something called the Domestic Peace Corps. I didn't want to go overseas, but in a Domestic Peace Corps, you joined them and you went to various migrant camps and taught kids in the migrant camps.

And as I said, I really enjoyed teaching so and I got a teaching credential as a result at Fresno State and then subsequently moved to Los Angeles. And Lucretia followed me down. She, she then went to Fresno State, got a teaching credential. Then we got married and moved to moved to Southern California. There I attended UCLA on what is called an off-campus program. I worked for a company called TRW Systems and the research project at the time was designing life support systems. So I did a doctoral program in building life support systems, but I actually never attended UCLA on campus. I worked in Manhattan Beach at the TRW system facility. I also continued teaching high school, and the reason I was teaching high school and going to this doctoral program at the same time was I got this job teaching high school chemistry at a private school was called the Buckley School, and they were very, very prominent and very well-connected. And so they said to me, boy, we really like you. You're teaching. Can you stay? I said, Well, no, I'm going to go to school. They said, Well, what does it take for you to go to school? I said, Well, I need to go to graduate school for mainly because I'm concerned about getting drafted. So the principal at the school says, don't worry about that, we'll take care of it for you.

So, you know, I'm 23 years old, and I'm thinking, can you really take care of this for me? And the next thing you know, I'd say within a month I get in the mail a draft deferment card, and the draft deferment is called a 2A deferment. And what it is, is to a deferment is a given to a person who is doing a job vital to the national defense. So the fact that I'm teaching high school chemistry and physics at this private high school, apparently it was good enough to be a be a, get a draft deferment. But the real reason that happened is some of the board members were well-connected to the military. And even then I would say that I was liberal minded, but the school was very conservative. It was called the Buckley School for one and four two, I'm pretty sure, but I never asked. The board member who was a military person was Curtis LeMay. So Curtis LeMay was an Air Force general who was just really, you know, a war hawk. But as near as I can tell, he's probably the only one who I think had military connections. So my vision is that Curtis LeMay gets on the phone, calls somebody and says, there's this guy, take care of this.

Timeframe 1:10:33 >> 1:13:11

I used to teach have student teachers come to from San Jose State and they would say, you know, how do you know how how is it the same question? How is it that you can teach middle school? And I told him there's there's this thing called a middle school gene. And the way you can tell if you have the middle school gene is you watch the kids and and as you watch their antics, I would tell the student teachers is the first thing you do is laugh and then you get mad. Then you probably had the middle school gene, but if you get mad first watching them, then you don't have the middle school gene like Lucretia does not have the middle school gene she taught. You can ask her later. She taught middle school for a year. She she doesn't want to be anywhere near a middle school classroom. That two things. One is their antics I could live with, and I mentioned that I had an attention problem. One thing about teaching in a middle school somewhat similar in a high school, but in middle school, you know, the science classes are done by periods. So I just prepare. I had several different preps, but all I have to do is prep for about 50 minutes of instruction. I could design programs that were really interesting to kids. Lucretia will tell you a bit about them, but I had some different ideas about how you approach teaching science and then after 50 minutes, the kids leave, you know, and I've refreshed and then you got to start all over. So the fact that it was less than an hour helped me, but it I wasn't slacking. I was I was preparing what I would think are some pretty good lessons. But, you know, 50 minutes was about the right amount of time for me to plan to do something. So and I was the basketball coach so that the being the basketball coach made me popular with the kids. You know, they'd see me. One of the things about a school is if I'm sure, you know, if the kids see you outside of the classroom, you know, they would you know, they'd look at it differently. And the fact that I coached the basketball teams and organized, you know, the the the the the games and things that that really sat well with the kids.

Timeframe 1:13:11 >> 1:19:11

(Interviewer) Like now I want to segue to you've already been talking about Lucretia and your children, but we heard from Lucretia, her side of the story. We'd like to hear from you. And you said that while you were at Berkeley, you're madly in love. But before the sparks flew, so to speak, how did you two meet? And then when did you know the sparks were flying?

Well, we actually first met in Fresno in college. There used to be an organization called the let's see…Chinese Scholastic Intercollegiate Organization. And what they would do is they would put on yearly programs and invite basically Chinese kids. They I don't think they checked, but they would invite these Asian kids to go to someplace and they would have events. They would have a dances and, you know, foods and things. So the CSIO event in Fresno was a good event because if you go to Fresno, there's nothing else to do. So, you know, all the kids stay together. So, you know, you, me, for instance, the following year was in San Francisco, but in San Francisco, there's too many distractions. There were so so what happens is Lucretia comes to Fresno. You know, she's anticipating meeting someone. Everybody's going, anticipating meeting someone. I go to Fresno. But again, I mentioned I liked playing basketball. There were two big events. Then one big event was a basketball tournament, and the other big event was a formal dance at the end. So my interest is playing in the basketball tournament. So I go down there and I met Lucretia and I said, when this girl's really cute, I like her, but I can't ask her out because the only reason I went down there was to play basketball. So I got basketball shirt, shoes and converse, you know, Converse. I think there's those Chuck Taylors and, you know, my jersey and shorts and stuff, but I don't have anything to wear to a formal. And Lucretia, her mom, was an outstanding seamstress. So Lucretia had this big, beautiful dress. I'm going to show you that dress later. I think that was a dress. But we we meet and at the time thinking, oh, jeez, I really like this girl, but I can't ask her out. I can't go to a formal in my basketball shorts. Right. So we leave.

But the following year, Lucretia has transferred to Berkeley from from junior college. And I still remember seeing her walking through Sather Gate. You know how things stick in your mind. I said, and I remember thinking, Oh, that's that's the girl from Fresno. And then we met at a dance. And then and then we just, you know, stayed together ever since. But we met we met again at a Chinese Student’s Club dance. And that's why we mentioned we met at Berkeley. We had actually met in Fresno, but we didn't get together. So it was just pure chance. But it worked out well. My family had a restaurant in Chinatown. It was called San To Yun. And you go down the stairs is on Clay Street, yah, and it was a real dive restaurant. I mentioned it earlier. So the story is her father, whom I really close to, was really, really close to. But we have actually gone out yet. I've asked her to go out, but we haven't gone out together. And Lucretia is explaining to her dad, who's just a model citizen, it's hard to describe John Chan, but just take my word for it. That's one of a kind. Oh, I told you that story that day about her not wanting to meet someone like her dad. So they go to they're going to go to this, right. Their regular restaurant, but it's not open. So they her dad says, okay, well, I know this restaurant, you know, let's go there. So they come down the stairs. I still kind of remember this. This there's a window there and there's stairs. So you can see feet coming down. But I don't know who it is. I'm just next to that window is this counter where the cash register is. And my job isn't actually to work in a restaurant. My job is to help clean up when they close and then take my dad home. We live in a Richmond district at that time, so, you know, my job is to drive him home and help him clean up and stuff.

But lo and behold, it's Lucretia and her family coming down and there's a huge coincidence there. I happened to be studying. I happened to have his book open every and her dad is just this model guy, and he was really impressed. So, Lucretia tells him I'm going out with this guy and and then they come down the stairs and there's me sitting behind the counter studying. And her dad was really impressed with that. So that after that I could do no wrong. Okay. They take me on family vacations and everything. They really wanted me to marry Lucretia, but the first impression that he got of me was this really studious guy. And Lucretia probably told him I was a pre-med major, so that's good. If you're telling your Asian parents that you're going to date pre-med major. Okay. So, you know, but you know that that one little incident. Yeah. Solidified my standing with her family.

Timeframe 1:19:11 >> 1:40:18

Yes, going back, I told you I was working at TRW Systems and at that point, I really thought I'd become an aerospace scientist, that that was my objective at that time. But in the I guess it's the early seventies, the aerospace industry is in decline and there are layoffs going on at TRW systems and they want to transfer me. Lucretia will verify this. They want to transfer me to a place called Hazelton Laboratories. They want to put me in charge of a lab there. And I came home and told Lucretia, Well, I think I'm going to get laid off. But they have offered me a job at Hazelton Laboratories. And Lucretia says, Where's Hazelton Laboratory? And I said, I was in a place called Falls Church, Virginia, and my geography isn't very good. So she asked me worse. Falls Church, Virginia. I said, I think Virginia is where all those coal mines are. Okay, so she gives me this look like, well, you're going to be awfully lonesome out there by those coal mines by yourself. Now, it later turns out that Falls Church, Virginia, is a suburb of Washington, DC. So if I had known better, I probably would have taken that job just to go. Maybe it was supposedly three-year commitment, but you know, read that they wouldn't have been able to do anything if I didn't keep them for three years. And then she asked me where, where we're going to end up. And I said to her, well, there are labs in Alabama, there are labs in Florida. And so if I stay in Washington or in Falls Church, I probably will end up somewhere in the South.

And Lucretia, I wouldn't describe Lucretia as a bad ass, but she she runs a show. Okay? So she tells me, no, I'm not I'm not going near I'm not going anywhere near those places. So I said to her, well, where would you like to go? And she said, I've always wanted to live in Palo Alto. So I said to her, Well, you can be unemployed anywhere. And that was a time when you could be unemployed anywhere. So I said, We'll move to Palo Alto. And she liked Palo Alto because she liked the city and its infrastructure. It was close to San Mateo, so we moved. We first stayed we first stayed here. Actually, my my father and my mother-in-law were here. And we you know, we stayed with him when I was looking for a job. And Lucretia is looking for a job. It's a very tough time to be looking for a job, actually, because, as I said, there are layoffs going on. So finally I get two offers, and I would say my life is a series of mistakes. My life is a series of making choices that I like. They might not necessarily be the best choice.

So I am offered two positions or have a chance at two jobs. One is at a company called Fairchild Semiconductor, and Fairchild Semiconductor becomes Intel. So I don't know what would have happened, but if I had gone to Fairchild Semiconductor, I probably would have stayed in the semiconductor industry, maybe found those guys that started Intel in business, but instead the other job offer was with something called Westinghouse Learning Corporation and Westinghouse Learning Corporation was doing something called programmed instruction. I didn't mention this, but I was interested in programmed instruction. It was using a computer to to teach. So I took the job at Westinghouse Learning Corporation and worked for not that long, maybe a year. But at that time I was developing curriculum materials and later on I'm sure you mentioned that AACI. AACI had a lot of background at that time in the curriculum field, so that's kind of how I ventured into that. But after a year of doing this, I decided, well, this is a I mean, I like education, but I don't really like doing this. So the see did I go directly to the yeah, I, I found a job teaching middle school here in San Mateo actually. So I did that for four years and was for want of a better description and I was very good at it. And one thing I remember in particular at that time was I was very popular with Asian students. I used to take Asian students on field trips along with African American students, and we'd go to Chinatown. And I remember these kids, you know, the African American kids, particularly my my family, you know, my mom and dad had been in all these associations and things. So we'd go into the back alleys in Chinatown. I'd take them up to the Lee Family Association, you know, knock on a door. And when the person answered, they would recognize me as my they would just record it. So we'd go through all these different places in Chinatown. They really loved that. So. So I did that for a few years.

But then something I forget, you have notes, and so hopefully I'm not jumping past some life changing events occur and I'm perfectly happy teaching middle school. Lucretia is teaching elementary school and she's perfectly happy. We own a house. We're just, you know, everything's good. But what happened is. Proposition 13. Proposition 13 comes and there's a freeze on property tax, which generally was beneficial to homeowners. We were homeowners at the time. But the problem was it it especially in the Palo Alto area and Menlo Park, it really affected school funding. And what happened was this Lucretia worked in a small district called Los Alamitos School District, and they they lost some funding and they had to lay teachers off. And I forget Lucretia will remember, but I think at the time, we're young and it's at the time you had to have something like 13 years of experience before they didn't lay you off. So Lucretia loses her job. She's at home not doing anything. And then she says something that's sort of I wouldn't say it's frightening, but she says, well, I guess it's time to start a family, okay? And I'm going, okay, you just lost your job. I'm working here. I don't have many years in as a teacher, so I don't know if we're going to have a family. And also we had a house. Vickie has been to the house. It was a house we were remodeling. So I needed money to remodel. So I said, I better do something different. So I left teaching and I went to work in industry.

Okay, so let's see. I don't know how to describe this. It doesn't sound like a schoolteacher could just hop right into industry, but if I have one talent, I suppose it's selling myself. So I get a job with a company that's a printing company. And ironically, they they interview me, and they want to know if I know this process. It's called screen process printing. And the reason I know about screen process printing is Lucretia at that time, besides being a teacher is an artist. You know, she did street fairs and she did screen process printing. So I knew the whole process. So I could describe the process to this company, and I'm not that old at the time, but this company, which is the largest screen process printing company in America, I mean, this is a big company. They had just fired their president and they said, well, this guy seems pretty sharp. Let's make him the president. So I go from being a schoolteacher to the CEO and president of the largest screen printing company in America. And screen process printing is a little different. The kinds of things we printed were like, if you look at a video game, there's a glass panel and it has a graphics on it. And that's done by the screen process, screen printing process. So we did lots of printing and our customers were companies like Atari. And I think I told you this story. We actually were the first printers for Apple. Apple Computer was in two buildings in Cupertino at the time. And we print the first Apple logo, you know, the logo with the colors and a little tip and the second printing, a much larger company doing what's called lithographic process came and pushed us out.

And we all said at the time, that's absolutely the wrong thing. And so I don't think you see it that often now, but every once in a while you drive around, you see a car with an Apple logo on it and it's all white. And the reason it's all white is it has been produced using the lithographic process, which puts it on a very, very thin layer of ink, as opposed to the screen process printing, which puts down a very heavy layering. So two things. One, this process is much, much more resilient. And two, we designated that the the the decal be covered with a UV blocker, you know, so that it would stay. But obviously that would be more expensive. So we we didn't we didn't stay with that. So I stayed in the printing business for a while. I should say parenthetically, how does a guy go from having a Ph.D. in physics to working in a printing business?

And it there's an interesting story there. When I was in middle school, I went to a school called Francisco Junior High School. And in those days they looked at Chinese boys especially, and they said, well, these guys aren't going anywhere. They're, you know, that we need to put them in vocational programs. So a Francisco Junior High School, I was in a vocational program and in vocation. I love that program. The classes that I took besides the regular English and math, the vocational programs were classes like Machine Shop, print shop, electrical shop, mechanical drawing, just all these, all these things. And so when I went back and went into the printing business, ironically, having spent probably 12 years in college, the thing that I found most useful in my work after I started doing these things was the fact that I had done a lot of vocational training. So I knew, you know, how the printing process worked. I could read a drawing because of the mechanical drawing, you know, the drawing classes. And so I could operate pretty well in a business that required you to do a lot of vocational type things. So I did that for a few years, not with this company, actually this company in the 1980s was a time almost a recession. So this company actually went out of business. But I, I went to another printing company, and I don't know, is anybody here in a rock and roll music or something or.

Okay, so I'm out of a job at that point. This is a few years after here that I came to know a guy named Lavonne Muscovy, and his name is probably lost to history. He had a print shop called TEA Lautrec lithography. And Lavonne said to me, “Oh, Ron, I see you're you don't have this job anymore. I'm going to give you this print shop because I want to retire.” He was kind of old at the time. And and so he gives me this print shop, and I'm running a print shop. Lucretia, who's very good at keeping books, is the bookkeeper. And the significance of TEA Lautrec lithography is that Lavonne was what you would call a house shop for Bill Graham. Bill Graham, this is a time when Bill Graham is doing all these rock concerts, okay? And so we when we took over the print shop, we at the time weren't really printing these things. But he, for instance, the shop printed of 200 and some rock posters done at Winterland. And for Bill Graham, we had printed probably maybe 210 of them. So we had printed like well, on the wall he had these shelves and on the shelves were these sample posters and he had some posters like Grateful Dead posters, Pink Floyd posters, just all these really probably those posters now are, you know, two or $300 apiece. And I would guess he had more than 10,000 posters there, but I couldn't make a go of it. It was a variety reason I couldn't make a go of it. So I told Lavonne, Lavonne I can't make this okay. And one of the reasons was he was a union, so he had union workers and his history goes all the way back to when, you know, labor movement in San Francisco. He was, you know, one of those fellows. And I said, well, Lavonne, I can't make it, so I'm going to give you back the shop. And the reason I couldn't make it was I told you, I learned a lot of things, but I couldn't operate a press, okay? If I could have operated a press or done a film or something that would contribute to the shop, then I would have been okay, but let's see. At the time we were doing Journey posters. Do you guys know Journey or you do? Whoa. You guys are older than I thought. Okay, so we're doing all the Journey posters. That's that's to show you there. But I left the shop, and because I felt bad, I didn't keep a single poster. Everybody in my family has a poster from TEA Lautrec Lithography that you see that we have a very large collection of posters.

But because I felt guilty, I didn't I didn't take a single I did take one poster which was in my sales kit, but I gave that away. So and ironically on site stories that that's the most famous Grateful Dead poster ever printed. It was called the Egyptian Tour Poster. And I don't know what it was worth, but I can tell you that it was the most famous poster ever printed. And as an example, when we would go to Bill Graham's office, he had the Egyptian tour poster on the wall behind his desk. That's how much he thought about it. So so let's see what happens. Print shop. I know this is a long story, but I did a lot of things somewhere along the line. I think it was after this, but I'm not sure.

I mentioned I had a lot of knowledge about vocational, vocational things and a very good friend of my own and AACI is this fellow named Paul Fong. You must know. Paul okay, so Paul comes to me and says, My family owns this property in Palo Alto. I want to form a limited partnership and I want to build some condos on it. But Paul didn't want to. I didn't want to take that on. And if you have learned anything from listening to me, it is that I'm sure I, I sort of look smarter than I am. Okay. So Paul says, Ron, why don't you form a limited partnership and build these condos for me? And I said, well, I'm not doing anything. Okay, I'll do that. So we formed a limited partnership, found an architect to build these condos there on Middlefield Road and then lo and behold, it came that one of his one of Paul's family members wanted to be in charge of this project. It was pretty much turnkey at that point. He just had to, you know, just say go. So I didn't really object to that, you know, because, you know, this is his family and it's their property. So I said, okay. So I left that project and I had see, that's when I decided to go back to teaching. Okay? So I couldn't find a teaching job. I mean, nobody would hire me because at that point I'm pretty old, okay? It's just older. So I would apply, I'd settle. Ideally, I would go to Palo Alto and this is a bit of an AACI story I think. They're interviewing me and they say, well, what have you been doing? So I tell them, and then I said, Now what are you doing now? And I said, well, I'm doing two things.

One is I'm on this curriculum commission evaluating textbooks, okay? And the other thing I was doing was I was helping on another curriculum commission which called a science curriculum commission. There was a Japanese American fellow who was in charge of this project. His name was Ken Kitajima. So I have trouble finding a job. Eventually October comes and I see, I see this listing for a science teaching job in San Jose. So I go down to interview for that job and the people interviewing me says this is the worst middle school in San Jose. Everybody sends their incorrigible kids to this school. It's so bad that we have our own police substation to try to keep track of things. And a teacher who is teaching science has left. So we need something right away and right away meant this is the day before Halloween. So I said, okay, well, I need a job. I'll take it on. So I take that job. And like I said, middle school is particularly middle school science is sort of my, you know, my strong suit. So I stayed there a few years and I taught there and had a very good experience. The only reason I left, I believe I went to another school or closer by. I changed schools and went to a school in Redwood City. And the reason for that is this school was pretty far away. It was way down off of Blossom Hill Road. It was from here. You had to go, you know, down 85 all the way almost to where it intersected with 101. And it was just a long drive. So I found this other job and I. I changed changed schools. And then I taught at this other school for a couple of years, taught in Hayward for a couple of years. And then retired.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:40:18 >> 1:45:13

I believe, beginning in the early seventies, AACI is just, you know, getting under way. I'm interested in initially when I read about it for a couple of reasons. One, I think I mentioned I had written some textbook type material. So I said to myself, well, this is something we can do. And Lucretia was interested in teaching at the time. I'm not sure she was working at the time, to be honest with you. So we contact them. Also by coincidence, one of our neighbors, Eimi Okano, you know, was there and Jeanette Arakawa was leading this this effort. So we decided, okay, yeah, we'll be involved in this. And then from that, we began to attend AACI meetings and became a regular members of AACI. And I have a little compliment for Lucretia, by the way. And Vickie looked at this book about AACI and I mentioned to her my name. I'd be surprised if my name is in there. Okay. And she looked through it. Did you ever find my name or. Certainly didn't have a picture. So I went back and looked at it, find my name in one or two places, but what had happened was, Lucretia, the reason I'm not a big time CEO, I mean, I'm talking, you know, Jeff Yang, level CEO is that I lacked the skills to be CEO, but Lucretia actually has all that skill set. If was a third person who had both skill sets, they would have been very successful. So Lucretia did a lot at AACI. Me, not so much only for not that, it wasn't just that, not that I was disinterested. It was the problem was Lucretia, you know, this is a seventies. And as I said, I'm trying to make my way in.

So I'm having to work pretty hard. So I didn't mention this, but I don't something I forgot I wasn't relatively successful in the business world till I started a company that produces, produced printed circuit boards and printed circuit boards, took all of the issues or things that I knew about screen process printing. Remember I had taken electrical shop at in junior high school. So all I needed to do to be successful at making a printed circuit board was I just needed to be able to read a bill fair and know what I'm, you know, know what a capacitor is. It's very elementary stuff, know what a resistor is and that kind of thing so that I need to stick in there.

But with the AACI thing, Lucretia was very active. I would do anything they wanted me to do, but to be honest with you, my main job was to just drive home. Lucretia doesn't like to drive, so I would drive her down to AACI. She would be like president of AACI or something, you know? And she's in charge of the refugee resettlement program and things like that. And my job is to just drive Lucretia there. And if they need anything extra, that would be something I was willing to do. And I did do things. I mentioned Vickie that very early on Mike Honda had decided to run for was the school board okay? He decided to run the school board. But we're all novices at that time. But I'm working for this company Trend Graphics at the time. And it was Ed Kawazoe who said, hey, we need some campaign posters. So it turns out that because the company was, I wouldn't say struggling, but, you know, it was I'm not there that long. So, you know, I shouldn't go and ask him to do this for me. But I what I did was I went to the company. I had to make a silkscreen. And so AACI used to be at this community center on Middlefield Road in Palo Alto. And the first I wish I had one, I think Mike would get a kick out of seeing this. The first campaign poster for Mike Honda was a poster that Ed Kawazoe, myself, Lucretia and Mike Honda. We printed those, you know, put the paper in squeegee to put it out to dry. And then and then, you know, he went on to much bigger things. But his first campaign poster was produced by us.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 1:45:13 >> 1:55:39

AACI and myself, not so much Lucretia, parted ways, and we knew at the time this was probably in the eighties, early eighties, that, you know, there was this fundraising requirement. And what happened is and there's no animosity here, this is just how it turned out. I am I think you can tell what I would call bricks and mortar guy. My idea of being in business is you make something, and you sell it, okay? It's could be printed circuit board could be poster, you know, whatever. Just parenthetically, AACI became very, very successful. I mean, they're a huge organization now, and the way they funded themselves was to be on boards and commissions and get grants and donations. Okay. They they didn't really buy into the concept of making something and selling it. And that is a wise decision because their revenue stream, they are so large now that the amount of revenue they would take, that would be a lot of posters to sell. Their budgets in the millions, I would imagine so they made the right decision. As for myself in the very early days, I would say to them, well, we can try doing what I do, we'll see how it works out. And they will. They went along with that. So my idea was, well, you see two examples here. The first example is the poster that you see on the wall and how that poster came about. The one on the left is the AACI the poster, the one on the right my company had also printed and I had a client, the client was called Drucker Vincent. And Drucker Vincent they were publishers of posters. You see a poster over here was called The Jar of Iris. That was another poster we did for Drucker Vincent.

We we did a lot of posters, in addition to doing the rock posters we were doing…I take it back, we did those posters before we did rock posters. But at any rate, I talked to these people at Drucker Vincent, and I tell them, this is what I want. What do you what do you think? And they they said to me, well, we have this client. He's a Japanese fellow, Japanese American fellow. His name is Tom Kamafuji. And Tom was a very, very well-known graphic artist. I think I mentioned to you that he was the designer of the Apple logo. I mean, he was, you know, at that level. So I asked the folks at Drucker Vincent and I said, well, what what if we produce, we get Tom to produce a poster for us and the way I'll pay for the poster is we'll print some, but I’ll print some for you, too, and you could take them and sell yours. That's how you get paid. And I will take I forget it must have been 100 posters and we will use them as a fundraiser for AACI. So we go ahead and do that. I take the hundred posters. I honestly do not know what happened to those posters at the time. I took 25 of them and had Tom Kamafuji sign a number that's assigned a numbered print. And there are a few AACI folks that have posters. But that was at about the time that I left being actively involved in AACI.

I mean, I just had to do different things even teaching school was taking up a lot of time. So to this day somewhere somebody has the word somewhere about a box of posters. I hope it shows up. But the box I gave to another AACI member and when she had since passed away, and when I asked her son, did he know where this box of posters was. And he said he he didn't know what what had happened to those posters. I have seen the signd. No, I have seen a regular poster not signed because we only probably AACI members have signed posters. I've seen that poster on eBay or online for $500. So because Tom Kamafuji is a very famous. So that's one. The second thing is that wire sculpture you see there at this point, AACI, they're going to give a fundraising dinner. I think they still give fundraising dinners because I think I get stuff in the mail. Okay, but the approach to fundraising dinners now is to sponsor a table, I believe I probably that's probably what it is. So you buy a table, you invite people in and they raise money. In one of the very first dinners, I said, I think I mentioned Ed Kawazoe. I said, Ed, forgot who it was. It was like Chinese for affirmative action or some outfit like that. I said, Ed, you know, these guys give dinners, and they give one away an award. And if we're giving away if we give away an award, then maybe more people will show up. So I added, you know, like Ed said, depending on what you want to talk to about Ed, you know, and knows everything. But if you want to talk about making something to sell it, that's not Ed's bag. I think you know that better. So I told is okay, well, you know, this is this is right up my alley. I'll do it.

So I, I say to myself and I ask Lucretia, who has a very strong art background, her major, her minor was in design. So she mentioned the name Ruth Asawa. And Ruth Asawa would be an ideal artist to produce this award for a number of reasons. Number one, her history, you know, is very distinct. Secondly, she's a sculptor. And so, you know, we could if she would sculpt something, and she does wire sculptures. So I forget how I contacted her. She lives in San... She lived at the time in San Francisco, but I contacted her. And if you knew her, she's a very kind, pleasant lady. Okay, so if somebody emails me out of the blue, I ain't answering. Okay? But I write the story and she says, Well, why don't you come out and let me know what it is you want? So we came out and we described the program, and to my great surprise said, yeah, I'll do this. So I don't know if you've seen her sculptures, but they're sort of like wire baskets. But she had another type of sculpture which was like that one, just wire. And we discussed and she said, okay, I'll make I'll make one of these for you and you can give it in a way as an award. And so I said, well, can you make five of them? I think it was five. She said, Sure. So what we did was my idea was to pay for this thing. We would make one, which was the award and sell the other four. I think I came to the conclusion that maybe we'll sell three of them and keep one for a future award. And Ed, I think it was Ed, what he said to me was, Ron, I gave him the numbers.

Okay. And he said, Ronnie, if we do this, we're going to lose money, okay? Because I don't know, we have to pay Ruth like $3,000. Okay. So I'm I'm saying. Well, we've sold two of them, one to my friend, one to Flo Wong, if you know Flo. And, and so that's 1500 dollars, but we're 1500 dollars like. So I said, well, you know, we do this right, we'll get more people coming to the to the awards ceremony. But Ed wasn't an entrepreneur. So he couldn't see making an initial investment so that the whole thing sort of did not go past this particular stage. But we had a dinner, we handed out the award, and actually the name Ruth Asawa enticed I.M. Pei, the famous architect, to accept this award. Now, if we had gone, if I had called him or sent him a letter, my name is Ron Lee. And I’m with AACI, I want to give you an award. They wouldn't have accepted that award, but I wrote him a letter and I said to I.M. Pei. Well, you know, we're this organization and Ruth Asawa has made this award and sure enough, he said he would come out then as luck would have it, when we set the date, he couldn't come. So I have shown you picture that was his son that came and accepted the award. Okay. But that was the only time we did the award. And then after that I have no I have no objection to this. It just turned out to be financially a lot more feasible to say here, we're going to have this dinner. Here's a table for ten. It's a thousand bucks or whatever. Write us a check and then invite your own people. And I'm pretty sure I would guess that's how AACI does things now. I haven't been involved in the dinner in a long time, but that's that's a good way to raise money. You know, you just get table sponsors and yeah, that works. So that's the story of the sculpture.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 1:55:39 >> 2:01:00

Lucretia doesn't mention this very often, I'm sure, but she is from a very historic Chinatown family and I know of her history for two reasons. One is her both her family's on her mother's side and her father's side are very close and they have reunions. And when they have reunions, they like to tell a little bit about their history. So one of the things I would do is I would put together a little slideshow and a slideshow would describe their history and the slide the histories began by me making, I'm sure lots of people make this pilgrimage, pilgrimage to the National Archives in San Bruno. And her family and my family had passed through the immigration station at Angel Island, and actually, my family had passed through the immigration station, which was called the Immigration Shed, which was in San Francisco. So I first began to gather some information about family histories by going and reviewing these interviews. But her cousins and lots of people were aware that both Lucretia, mom and dad, were from historic families, so they would save pictures and things like that. So we don't have an extensive collection, but we have a fairly large collection of photos from, you know, both sides of the family.

My father-in-law, John, more so than my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law wasn't too communicative, but she you know, she had a good heart. Okay. She Lucretia can tell you about that. But she you know, she she had a favorite phrase. If you asked her question, her response would always be, never mind. Okay. And that was it. She would just say, never mind. You know, so I know a little bit more about John's history, but most of this history comes from the fact that, you know, they they they're pretty historic. And one thing that has sort of surfaced very recently, I'm sure Lucretia mentioned this is her father's store, which is located at 800 Grant Avenue, has been recently purchased by an organization that's working from a grant. And the grant is for $26.5 million. And the organization's called the Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative. And the plan is to convert that building, which is a very large building at the corner of Clay and Grant, which is really at the center of Chinatown. Big, big building that stands out. So they're going to change this. And what they're hoping to do is revitalize Chinatown. Now, Chinatown on Stockton Street, a block up, is very busy, but as you well know, Grant Avenue is not so busy. So they're trying to come up with some programs or some ideas about how to revitalize Chinatown. And so we had sent…I had we had done a website about the store which is Sing Cheung. And so I sent them a link to that and saying, well, okay, here's what the store was like before. And they are we're in the middle of this. They're very excited about it. They would like to reference the URL and the link. Alison, my younger daughter is in the process of changing that website and the reason it needs to be changed is that was a website about the family reunion. So there's pictures of cousins and things like that, and then there's a fairly good history of the store, but it's produced by me, so it's not very professional looking. So Alison is trying to fix it up. And also I used most of this is not subject to copyright, but I used a couple of pictures, watercolors from a famous artist. One's name is Don Kingman and the other one is named Jade Fawn, who had painted pictures of the store. But we didn't really have permission to actually put those pictures on a website. So Alison's in process redoing it and she's using a different URL. She's going to use 800 Grand Avenue, which is the address, as opposed to the website we use now, which is called SingCheung.Store, which is just you know, it's more of a family thing.

Narrative & Identity Timeframe 2:01:00 >> 2:07:14

(Interviewer) Regarding your community activism, what would you say is key philosophy or events that shaped your political activism?

Okay. Well, of course, encountering and joining AACI is is is one moment in our adult life. For myself, I will mention that I, I, when I was in Chinatown, I hung out on a place called Cameron House. In Cameron House, it was one of the one of the church missions in Chinatown. So they had lots of programs there. But their orientation was towards community service. So, you know, they would have programs and we would the object of those programs were oftentimes to provide services for kids in Chinatown. An example would be they had a system of clubs who joined this club according to your grade. And so I belonged to a club. And then later on in years when I believe I was in high school, I became a club leader. So I had some kids in the club and they they had a religious bent to them. But it wasn't it wasn't too serious. Have you ever been to the Chinese Historical Museum? Well, my my connection there is a little connection. But if you go into the display area, it's what is obviously an old gym and there's a stage up there. And so I used to teach Sunday school on that stage. That's that's there's no plaque there. But I, that's what I used to do for Cameron House. I had this bent towards community service as a result of being a Cameron house kid and then having encountered AACI, the only real mentor I had because I when I thought about it was my dad was quite a bit older, so he passed away when I was relatively young, not real young, but he passed away when I was maybe 35.

So the person that became really my mentor was Lucretia’s dad. Because by then, you know, I met Lucretia when I'm 19 and you know, I spent a lot of time with her dad. And we went through all of the phases together as father and son. And that would mean he he would mentor me, not about activism, but, you know, he just about life in general. So we went through some phases when we first when I first married Lucretia, he was sort of my my mentor, you know, telling me how things are. And pretty soon we become friends and we would go, we he loved to eat, so we'd go to restaurants. We played golf together. He liked to play bridge. So Lucretia and I and John and we would find a fourth and play a lot of bridge so we I would say in that phase we're sort of friends, Okay and then this we always find humorous. As he got older, I think you saw or Lucretia told you that he became interested in photography and his idea of taking a picture. Let's see. I don't think we have an example. I can show you an example later. His idea of taking a picture would be to carry this 60 pound box camera, view camera. He would go to a place like Yellowstone, a hike out into the hills when it's snowing and there's a picture of some birch trees just rising out of this snowbank. And he'd set his camera and he'd sit there for hours. Okay, pretty soon the light's just right. So he takes his picture pictures. Beautiful. Maybe if we have time, I'll show you some of the pictures you take.

But Lucretia and I are looking at this as a national way. We're. We're going out there. So starting with when he retired, when he was about 65, I guess, you know, we did a lot of things together, but we didn't hang out with him. We didn't, you know, go on these trips to the middle of nowhere to take pictures. So the funny part to that is he was very friendly. So he would meet people and he would go to events. And what happened was he's going to these events, but they're all interested in the same things. Could be photography, could be art. Hiking was another thing he did and pretty soon it gets to a point where his friends he's going to these events, his friends are younger than us. He says, Oh, I'm going to so-and-so's birthday party. And we'd say, Oh, and it's nice. How old is he? He said, Oh, he's 60. And maybe we're, you know, 65, that point. And so we're thinking, oh, geez. And he he was he was an amazing hiker. He hiked with the with the Sierra Club and at 92, if you get a chance if we get. Yes, actually be he get out walk me at 92. As a matter of fact, we were on a hike to Diamondhead, and we walked to the top of Diamondhead and I have bad knees. He's 92 and he has to help me come down. He has to hang hands me his pole and he's hanging on to me and we're climbing down the stairs and Diamondhead. But he's 92 and I'm, you know, I don't know how old I am, but I'm not anywhere near 92. But what slowed him down was a fall. At one point he fell right here, hit his hip on that terraza, broke his hip. And then he wasn't quite a right. He mentally, he stayed active for his whole life, but he not too long after he turned 92, he stopped, you know, he was in a wheelchair.

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Okay. Well, I think I would say in terms of activism, I wouldn't say that you needed to have an actual sentence type definition. I think activism is a matter of being there and being there and using whatever skills and knowledge that you have, you know, to recognize a need and then doing what you can. One of the regrets I have is I never talked to my mom about, you know, things. So the other thing I would suggest young people do is, you know, talk to talk to some elders, talk to them. You know, it may not seem that important. Maybe if you query them now, you will learn things that will surprise you. So and how that how that relates to activism is no matter what a young person thinks is going on now, you know, as much consternation is going on now, there are a couple of famous phrases. One is that the past is prologue. You know, if you don't know about the past, you know, you're not going to know what to do. And then there's George Santayana, who said, you know, those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat it. So I suggest that our kids you don't need a program for activism, but you should build some knowledge about what's going on. And then if you do that, you will see things that go on around you today, which happened, you know, 200 years ago. And it's still going on.