Certainly there were times, after the death of her husband and amid four major surgeries in five years, when Charlene Lee could have despaired.
But as understandable as the reaction would have been, to those who know Lee well, nothing would have been more out of character.
"I try to be positive," says Lee, 68. "I’ve had a lot of blessings in my life, and I need to stay strong and positive to enjoy all of them."
Lee and her four siblings grew up in Liliha. Her father was a truck driver for Union Oil. Her mother worked as a timekeeper at the pineapple cannery.
After graduating from Hawaii Baptist Academy, Lee — who joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a teenager — attended Church College of Hawaii and the University of Hawaii.
While still in college, Lee met her future husband, Leighton, a Punahou alumnus attending college at Michigan State. After a long-distance courtship, the couple married and relocated to California, where Leighton found work as a computer analyst for Boeing and Lee completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education.
The couple worked tirelessly in those early years. Lee recalls dropping off her husband at work, driving to her own job as a kindergarten teacher in the Long Beach Unified School District, then later picking up her husband and driving him to his second job as a computer science teacher at a local community college.
The transition to living away from family, being a wife and, soon enough, being a mother wasn’t easy, but Lee said she was sustained by her religious faith and the widening circle of friends she and her husband made.
Lee had offers to pursue an administrative position but remained in the classroom so she could devote more time to her three children: J.T., Mary and Nate. She would teach for 31 years before finally retiring.
Lee and her husband had hoped to spend their senior years traveling together, but Leighton died of a rapidly advancing form of cancer just three years after he retired and just months before the first of his nine grandchildren was born.
In the years that followed, Lee endured her own set of ills, undergoing a hip replacement, two surgeries for her back and another surgery for a broken kneecap.
"After my husband died, I felt that my role as a matriarch was very important," Lee said. "I didn’t want to be a burden. I wanted to be strong for my kids and grandkids."
Healthy, strong and positive as ever, Lee devotes much time to her church and to family and friends in California. She also makes frequent visits to Hawaii, where her two sons and their families reside.
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
