Education
Jul. 31, 2002
Educator Was Expert on Commercial Code
SAN DIEGO - Lawrence D. Lee Jr., one of the founding faculty members at California Western School of Law, has died at his Carlsbad home of complications from lung and heart disease. He celebrated his 75th birthday one day before his death July 13.
Lee, whose interests ranged from Latin American politics to portrait photography, was an expert on the Uniform Commercial Code and "one of the most brilliant lecturers on the UCC I've ever seen," said a fellow Cal Western professor, Marilyn Ireland.
"He ran a pretty Socratic class," Ireland said. "He expected his students to figure out the answers in class."
During the 31 years Lee taught at the law school, beginning in 1971, he offered courses on law and technology, commercial law, sales and secured transactions. He founded the Al Simon Center for Telecommunications Studies, the forerunner of Cal Western's Telecommunications and Property Law Center, and he chaired the professional responsibility committee, Ireland said.
Despite Lee's school activities, he didn't want to be ground up in the wheels of bureaucracy, Ireland said.
"He hated faculty meetings," she recalled. "He was known as the faculty member who would be first to move to adjourn. He wanted to act, to be doing things - not talking."
Lee was a descendant of Robert E. Lee and kept a portrait of the Confederate general in his home, Ireland said.
Born July 12, 1927, in Omaha, Neb., Lee received a bachelor's degree from UCLA, a law degree from the University of Southern California Law School and a master's degree from Harvard Law School. He was a law school instructor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the University of Pittsburgh before joining the faculty at Cal Western, where he became an emeritus professor. He retired last spring.
Lee, who spoke Spanish fluently, lived as a young man in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua. He knew political leaders in both countries and once served as a lobbyist for Latin American nations, Ireland said.
After he returned to the United States, Lee imported tropical fish for awhile, Ireland said.
Lee, who was married twice, was gregarious but kept his private life in the background, said Ireland, who first met him in 1979. He liked to read science fiction and often talked about the cameras he used to make portraits and photograph landscapes, she said.
When he led a conversation, she said, he shied away from talking about intellectual matters. But if the talk ventured into deeper waters, he always had positions that he had obviously thought through, Ireland said.
He was a striking man with a "twinkle in his eye so that you knew that he knew a secret about life, and he wasn't going to share it," Ireland said. "In his day he was quite a bon vivant. The ladies tended to flock to him, and he didn't object at all."
In Lee's latter years, his heart and lung problems became so grave that he couldn't cross the street from his office to his classrooms without aid, Ireland said, but "he was determined to stay in the saddle."
He is survived by three daughters, Renee Smith of Pharump, Nev., Jane Martin of Flagstaff, Ariz., and Alicia Rosov of Gaitherburg, Md.; two sons, Stephen Lee of Sherman Oaks and Lawrence D. Lee Jr. of Santa, Idaho; nine grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
A private memorial service is planned. Instead of flowers, the family requests donations in Lee's name to California Western School of Law, Attention: Development, 225 Cedar St., San Diego, CA 92101.
Claude Walbert
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