 
John J. Lee |
benefactor John J. Lee dies
Entrepreneur and executive John J. Lee '58E, '59 M.Eng., a star basketball player at Yale during the 1950s who later became a University trustee and chaired the University's most ambitious fundraising campaign, died May 5 at his home in Larchmont, New York.
The cause of death was kidney cancer. Mr. Lee was 64.
"As a scholar, athlete, husband, father, businessman and alumni leader, John Lee set the highest standard," says President Richard C. Levin. "No one loved Yale more or served it better."
Yale named the Payne Whitney Gymnasium's John J. Lee Amphitheater in honor of the alumnus, who set a number of Yale records in basketball and helped lead the Yale team to its first Ivy League Championship in about a decade. A forward, he made the record for highest points-per-game average in his sophomore year and earned national attention in his junior year, when Sports Illustrated profiled him as the "next great Ivy League scholar-athlete." In that article, Yale basketball coach Joe Vancisin said of Mr. Lee: "Johnny's not only a student of basketball, but a real student in school -- exactly what he's supposed to be."
Mr. Lee is one of only two Yale players to score 40 or more points in a game and is the last to do so (against Harvard in 1958). He ranks sixth in career scoring at Yale with 1,493 points. Mr. Lee received All American honors for his prowess on the court, and was later elected to both the All-Ivy League Silver Anniversary Team and the National Association of Basketball Coaches' Silver Anniversary All-American League Team.
"John Lee was a champion in every way," says Tom Beckett, director of athletics. "He cared so much about Yale and the people here, and he was a terrific person to work with. He is truly one of the legends of Yale University."
After graduating from Yale College, Mr. Lee was drafted by the New York Knicks, making him only the second Yale player picked by a major basketball league. He passed up that opportunity to pursue graduate work in chemical engineering at Yale.
After graduating, Mr. Lee began a corporate career, serving as president and chief executive officer of the Barber Oil Corporation and the Phibro Resource Corporation, and as president and chief operating officer of the Tosco Corporation, a multi-billion-dollar energy company. For a time he also ran his own firm, Lee Development Corporation, in Stamford, Connecticut. Prior to his death, Mr. Lee was the chair and chief executive officer of the Hexel Corporation, an aerospace materials manufacturer.
Born in Brooklyn, the son of immigrant parents, John Lee was a basketball star at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School. Speaking at the dedication of the John J. Lee Amphitheater in 1997, Mr. Lee noted that he came to Yale at a time when the student body was just beginning to become more diverse; he was among a small number of inner-city, first-generation Americans from a public high school. His Yale experience, he said, changed his priorities and perspectives as a young man. "Learning became central; athletics became peripheral," he explained.
Later, as an alumnus and a Yale trustee, Mr. Lee often expressed his support of the University's commitment to a need-blind admissions policy, in which students are selected based on their academic merit without consideration of their ability to pay.
After graduation, Mr. Lee maintained close ties to the University. He participated in the Engineering Alumni Fund, the Yale Basketball Association and the Yale Athletic Federation; was a delegate of the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA); cochaired the Fund for Engineering; served on the Yale Development Board and was a long-time member of the University's Investment Committee, as well as of the University Council's Committee on Athletics. He also was a member of the Alumni Schools Committee and the Yale Club of New York, among other associations. In recognition of his service to the University, Mr. Lee was presented the Distinguished Alumni Award in Engineering in 1977 and received the Yale Medal, the AYA's highest honor, in 1989.
In the late 1980s, Mr. Lee made a gift to the University to establish a junior professorship in engineering. Another gift to Yale helped fund the renovation of the main varsity sports amphitheater that now bears his name, and he also endowed a foreign travel fund for the men's and women's varsity basketball teams. In a fall 1988 report of the Fund for Engineering, he was quoted as saying, "[I]t gives me particular pride and satisfaction to be able to repay just a portion of what Yale has given me in terms of an education and a lifetime experience."
Mr. Lee became an alumni trustee of the University in 1993 and chaired the Yale Corporation's Committee on Development and Alumni Affairs. Later, while serving as chair of the Leadership and Major Gifts Committee for the University's five-year fundraising campaign "... and for Yale," which began in 1992, Mr. Lee was asked to step in as the national chair of the campaign -- the University's largest fundraising initiative ever. The campaign raised more than $1.7 billion by its conclusion in 1997, then a record for a college or university fundraising drive.
"Yale's fundraising success over the past decade is in large part a direct result of John's efforts," says Charles J. Pagnam, vice president for development. "He had the unique gift of caring for and giving to others, wherever he was. His unrivaled commitment to the University was matched only by his devotion to his family."
In a speech at the dedication of the John J. Lee Amphitheater, Levin praised the alumnus' long-time loyalty and dedication to Yale by telling Mr. Lee: "You are the kind of person we hope all our student athletes will become: one who by his leadership and service displays on the court of life the lessons learned on the courts of youth."
Mr. Lee is survived by his wife, Gayle; and by four children, three of whom are also Yale alumni: Jocelyn Lee of Portland, Maine, a member of the Yale Class of 1986; Lauren Stone of Wilton, Connecticut, also Class of 1986; Roger Lee, Class of 1994, who lives in San Francisco, California; and John J. Lee III of Larchmont, New York. He is also survived by a brother, Robert Lee, of Fairbanks, Alaska; and by five grandchildren.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Cancer Research Foundation, c/o Dr. Janice Dutcher, 640 W. 239th St., Riverdale, New York 10463, or to the Cancer Support Team, 933 Mamaroneck Ave., Suite 102, Mamaroneck, New York 10543.
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