This week and next, Incidental Lives celebrates the 100th birthday of Kahala Heights resident Joseph Lee.
As a leap year baby, Joseph Lee could argue with perfect truth that he has celebrated his Feb. 29 birthday just 23 times.
But Lee has no use for mathematical misdirection. There is much to celebrate in turning 100.
Retired for more than 40 years from his job as a supervisor for Hawaiian Telephone Co. and a decade or so removed from his post-retirement life on the links, Lee has had ample time to reflect on a life well spent on the people and things he has loved most.
Lee’s father, Bew Lee, came to Hawaii from China in 1896, enduring 30 hungry days in the steerage section of the ship. He found work first at a rice plantation on Kauai and later at his uncle’s butcher shop at C Q Yee Hop & Co. in downtown Honolulu.
Once established, he returned to China to find a wife.
“He wrote ahead to tell them he was coming to look for a wife,” Joseph Lee said. “They had six or seven girls lined up waiting for him when he got there. He picked my mother right off the bat.”
Bew Lee’s new bride remained in China a few years while he returned to work in Hawaii.
In 1912 Lee returned to China to escort his wife back to Hawaii. The voyage back to the islands was difficult, and the couple lost a child to miscarriage during the journey.
Koon Chew Lee was the couple’s third born, an athletic boy with a rascally spirit and a kind disposition.
He attended Kauluwela Elementary before transferring to Saint Louis School. It was at Saint Louis that a teacher, unwilling to call him by his birth name, redubbed him Joseph.
Lee cared little for his teachers’ stick-wielding discipline, but he thrived on opportunities to participate in a wide variety of sports. An all-around athlete, he excelled in baseball, basketball, golf and bowling. In tennis he won territorial championships in singles and doubles competition.
Lee also studied Chinese at the Mun Lun School, where he met a gifted student named Dorothy “Dot” Lai.
“She was No. 1 in our class,” Lee said, laughing. “I was No. 1 on the other end.”
The two traveled in different groups and had little opportunity to interact. It wasn’t until their separate groups of friends converged at a waterfall during a hiking trip in Manoa that Lee and Dot first noticed each other.
“I had made a cup out of a leaf and got some water for one of the girls,” Lee recalled. “(Dot) said, ‘Hey, do you have one of those for me?’ I looked at her, and she was so tall and pretty. I would have given her three or four cups!”
Lee was smitten.
It was just the beginning.
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Next week: Hard jobs, the joy of family and the value of things that last.
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
