My recent visit, 3/30/11 to 4/6/11

I returned from another incredible visit with Uncle Frank just last week. In a word it was nearly nirvana! I'm not religious, but it almost felt like heaven. We spent six days talking about almost every subject imaginable, reading to each other, sharing music together, playing tennis, eating wonderful meals, caring for my Aunt Bettye (who is, so sadly, in the very advanced stages of Alzheimers), and playing catch with a softball in his back yard. Toward the end of my visit, we also had the wonderful addition of my dear friend Elise Richard who drove down from Montreal for two days. Her presence only enhanced the already beautiful time we were having. Plus she and I played sonatas for him and my cousin Cliff and his wife Cathy, two lovely people too! And as I have been doing for about a year now, I recorded many of our conversations on my my iPhone Recorder Pro. I also took some high definition video on my Canon HD camcorder.

I'm pleased to share that though she is so seriously ill with Alzheimers, my Aunt Bettye can still smile and laugh and attempt to talk. The words are rapid and largely incomprehensible, but she tries and she always seems to eagerly have something to say. What an awful disease Alzheimers is. In addition, and also extremely sadly, my uncle has lost almost 60% of his hearing. This is particularly upsetting for a man for whom one passion is music. However, I helped him make some progress with his new hearing aids by playing my cello for him while he experimented, in some cases very successfully, with different volume combinations and even with removing one which enabled him to hear everything in tune! I emphasized to him that if the hearing aids were completely ineffective he would not have been able to hear any better at all. In spite of it all, though he was certainly very discouraged and deflated that he was still experiencing inconsistencies with hearing music even with the hearing aids, he maintained a sober, gracious, and gentle attitude. His ability to handle stress is exemplary. For me, both my uncle's hearing loss and my aunt's Alzheimers disease are reminders of how nature is so much more powerful than we; e.g. cancer, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, etc. We are at nature's mercy.

Mostly, I just enjoyed asking Uncle Frank questions and listening for hours to his marvelous responses and stories. Every syllable that my uncle speaks is like poetry. He enunciates elegantly and even musically, whether he's reading poetry or sharing a story from his life. And the stories ran the gamut, from his paratroop missions during WWII to his lovely family reminiscences. And through all he moves from factual history and anecdote, to beautiful emotion, to unexpected and hilarious wit. It is simply a joy to be in his company. He is also so clearly and superbly educated. But then he is the son of a man who was brilliant beyond words. (I will be posting some of the conversations I recorded to my iDisk very soon for all of you to enjoy at your leisure!)

I am indeed lucky to have such a marvelous family, on both sides, the Lees and the Richeys!! (Curious and fun that the combination of those two family names is my name!)

(By the way, Elise Richard took this nice picture of us! Photography is often about luck (with light, composition, comfort of the subjects, etc.) and she got lucky with this one. But it also shows that she has an eye for photography.)

Meet my Uncle Frank!

This blog is primarily a link to my GoDaddy.com website where I have posted audio recordings of conversations I had with my Uncle Frank Ayre Lee. Very sadly, he died recently at the age of 88. 


Frank Lee is my mother's brother. Next to my father, my Uncle Frank was the most influential man in my life. He was brilliantly intelligent, warm, kind, well-spoken, ceremonial (he loved to host and entertain) phenomenally well-read in poetry and prose, a writer (of a few plays), and an amateur violinist (gave my mom her first lesson!). As he and my mother both told me, he (they) came from a father who was Classically educated in German private schools in Cincinnati. He read Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin (astonishing!). And he and his children played an ongoing game with the dictionary in which his three children tried to stump him with an obscure word. They always lost. According to my mother, "there wasn't one word in the dictionary that he didn't know." That was my mother's side of the family. I have always been proud of my whole family. I have written about my dad's side of the family with the Ben Richey Boy's Ranch. Now I want to try to do a little justice to my mother's side of the family with my Uncle Frank.


Uncle Frank was very at ease in these conversations even though he knew they were being recorded. This is not surprising. In addition to all the accolades that I mentioned above, he is also a very distinguished speaker. His voice is resonant and clear, commanding, riveting, and warmly captivating. In his distinguished career as a chemical engineer, he was president and chairman of the board of the New Jersey based engineering firm, Foster-Wheeler Corporation. I was fortunate to attend his retirement ceremony in May of 1982 in the main hall of his company's headquarters. I experienced his skill as an orator and businessman as he officiated the proceedings from a podium on the stage, with a panel of his coworkers seated to his right and left, and a packed house of guests, family, and the general public. It was highly impressive.


I loved and admired my Uncle Frank immeasurably and I know my mother did too. I feel fortunate indeed to have had him in my life and that he so graciously agreed to allow me to record our phone conversations. They are priceless to me. I hope you will give one or all of them a listen.


Click on the link below. It will take you to directly to my GoDaddy.com website and the folder, "Conversations with Uncle Frank." Click on the folder and then on any of the tracks to begin downloading.


Enjoy!!


https://www.onlinefilefolder.com/3fynv1hZCWYRAF


(With some diffident humility, I will warn you that though I think I asked some interesting questions, next to him I sound less well or clearly spoken. I have somewhat of a good speaking voice, but I am not nearly as clearly articulate or consistent with my speaking as he was which is a testament to the profundity of his education and the evenness of his temperament. I have always had a bit of a hyperactive streak and it shows itself intermittently in the nuances of the speed of my articulation of letters and words. Not so with my uncle. He was very even and careful when he spoke, almost as though he's thoughtfully writing down what he was saying as he was speaking!)