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!)