Dr. Ching Tsung Lee

Dr. Ching Tsung Lee was born in Chiu-fen, Taiwan, in 1937. He earned a B.S. (Electrical Engineering) from National Taiwan University in 1962 and a Ph.D. (Physics) from Rice University in 1967. Dr. Lee was a Physics Professor at Alabama A&M University from 1969 to 2001. Dr. Lee enjoyed teaching at A&M and doing theoretical physics research, which was supported by grants from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Dr. Lee published 25 papers in Physical Review A, one paper in Physical Review Letters, and 30 more papers in various Quantum Optics journals. Survivors include wife Suhwa Lee, son Perry Lee, daughter Lily Lee, son-in-law James Porter, grandson Lee Kai Porter, and granddaughter Nia Lee Porter. Celebrating the life of Dr. Ching Tsung Lee from daughter Lily Ning Lee My father was born in the small seaside mining village of Chiu-fen, Formosa, the beautiful island of Taiwan. My grandfather taught him how to grow rice and sweet potatoes and how to trap mountain pigs. My grandfather was a gold miner who died when my father was 9 years old. My father endured hardship in his early life. Overcoming many obstacles, in 1958, my father earned the highest grade in Taiwan in the entrance exam for the Physics Department in National Taiwan University. He supported himself through college by tutoring high school students whose parents wanted them to pass the hard college entrance exams. After graduation, my father served the Taiwanese Navy in 1962 for one year. In 1962, my father scored 99% in the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE’s) in Physics. Rice University telegrammed to offer him a full scholarship. The father of his best friend in college, Dr. T. J. Moh (Math Professor at Purdue University), loaned my father an airplane ticket to Houston, Texas. My father carried a small suitcase with a rice cooker and a package of rice to Texas. In 1967, Dr. William Houston, the late president of Rice University, guided my father’s research to earn his Ph. D. Thank you to Dr. Houston. That year he also married my mother, Suhwa Lee. A year later, I was born. In 1969, Dr. Donohue from Rice University was doing consulting work at NASA here in Huntsville. Together with Dr. Foster, Physics professor at Alabama A&M University, they brought my father, my mother, and me (11 months old) to A&M until he retired in 2001. Thank you to Drs. Donohue and Foster. My brother Perry was born in 1971. My father enjoyed watching the evening news after work. But he was so tired, he would fall asleep. My brother Perry said, “When I grow up, I will watch the news and sleep too.� My father loved teaching at A&M, where he wrote long equations on the black board. He was very pleased when one of his students who had already graduated returned to say that he used my father’s lecture notes to teach his own students in another state. My father burned the midnight oil doing theoretical research in Physics, thanks to decades of support grants from the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research. He also guided the Ph.D. theses for Dr Jeffery Haight and Dr. Curtis Jordan, and became friends with Dr. Arjun Tan at A&M University. In 1976, our family spent a year at Princeton University, where my father served as the Danforth Visiting Faculty Fellow. He also conducted research for two summers at Redstone Arsenal, with Dr G. Miller and Dr W. Jones. Together, they published two papers in Applied Optics (1981-1982). He also worked two summers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (1974 and 1984). After his retirement in 2001, my father was very concerned about his homeland Taiwan and spent two to three hours a day watching news about Taiwan. In the past five years, he has also enjoyed visits from his grandchildren, Kai and Nia. He even started teaching Kai math, hoping he will walk in Grandpa’s footsteps and start solving triple integrals soon. Retirement also gave my father more time to garden. He grew squash, many kinds of melon, cabbages, flowers, and a thick carpet of zoysia grass on the front and back yards. My mother thought he spent too much time tending his grass. But he told her, “While I am gardening, I am thinking about my research at the same time.� It is fitting that on Friday, August 6, he was in his beloved backyard pulling weeds when he suffered a serious stroke. Thank you to Mr. Mike Mohlere, our next door neighbor, for calling an ambulance and taking my mother to the hospital. Thank you also to Mike, his wife Amy, and to our other neighbors Judy and Tommy Odom for their warm and caring support during this difficult time. Thank you also to Dr. Jon Moody and his associates who have cared for my father the last twenty years through ministrokes before this last final major stroke. Thank you also to Dr. Robert Baird and Dr. Michael Wang for their care. We also thank Judy Barnes at Frost Printing for quickly doing a booklet to honor my father. And finally, thank you to my father Ching Tsung Lee, for giving us 73 full years. You have not only taught us physics equations. More importantly, you have taught us that a poor skinny fatherless kid carrying sand on his back up mountains to pay for school can become the first in his family of eight children to go past sixth grade. That through teaching others, we give back the gifts we have received. And that we must sing our own song, quietly but courageously. Your spirit will live on through these lessons that we have learned from you and that we will pass to our children, our students, and everyone we will touch as you have touched us. Thank you.