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Sam Sang Hoy Lee returned home to Hawaii after a 26-year foreign service career to help lead a fight to get developers and the government to clean up Mililani’s water system of pesticide contamination, an effort that led to a decade in the state House of Representatives.
Lee, the husband of Rep. Marilyn Lee, who succeeded him in the House, died Friday morning from cancer. He was 81.
Born in Kalihi to Chinese immigrants who produced sea salt and raised fish and vegetables, Lee graduated from Saint Louis School and the University of Missouri. He became a Fulbright Fellow and received a master’s degree from Yale in international relations before entering the Foreign Service in 1955.
As a diplomat, Lee served in Sicily, Germany and Yugoslavia, and then later Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan.
After Lee’s retirement from the Foreign Service, the family moved to the new master-planned suburban community of Mililani in 1981. As chairman of the Mililani-Waipio-Melemanu Neighborhood Board, Lee led the fight to have Mililani’s developer clean the community’s water wells of agricultural pesticides. Eventually the developer paid for a $2.5 million carbon filter system, and the state began drilling new water wells for the town.
Lee entered politics at the urging of the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink and was elected to the House in 1986. As a lawmaker, Lee chaired the Higher Education Committee. He also focused on economic development, trade with Asia and technology.
He was re-elected four times, retiring in 1996. Marilyn Lee ran for the vacant seat and remains the area’s representative.
House members observed a moment of silence Friday in Sam Lee’s memory. House Speaker Calvin Say, a one-time colleague, said, "Sam’s experience as a diplomat took him around the world, but he returned to Hawaii to give back to our community."
After his retirement he remained active in political circles writing op-ed pieces, chairing his wife’s election campaigns and roaming the halls of the state Capitol talking politics with lawmakers, bureaucrats and reporters.
Besides wife Marilyn, Lee is survived by sons John, Thomas and Andrew; daughter Kammy; sister Sally Taitano; brothers Tsin Hoy and Chew Hoy; and six grandchildren.
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