RICHARD LEE

LEE RICHARD W.H. LEE Recipient of U.S. Government Gold Medal and Founder of MBA Program that trained the first generation of China's Corporate Managers dies at 91 Richard W.H. Lee, the former Director of Science and Technology Programs, U.S. Department of Commerce, who developed and managed an internationally acclaimed management training program in China in the 1980s for which he earned the Department's Gold Medal, died peacefully at his home in Silver Spring, MD on Monday, October 16, 2017. He was 91. He had metastatic colon cancer. Mr. Lee was born in Nanjing, China on June 12, 1926 to Fuxiu Huang and Dr. Handel Lee, President of the Nanjing Theological Seminary. He graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1948, and in April of 1949, he married Dora Fugh. Together they left a war-ravaged China for Tokyo, where he worked for the Chinese Mission and then the U.S. Army. In 1957, he and his wife immigrated to the United States where he worked for Esso Research Center and obtained his Master's degree in Engineering Administration from George Washington University in Washington, DC in 1961. In 1965, he began his long career with the federal government at the Food and Drug Administration, National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and finally at the International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce. For almost 30 years, Mr. Lee provided the government extensive technical and managerial expertise in computer and information science and technology. His special interests were in the applications of advanced technology (computers, micrographics, telecommunications, video imaging and optics, etc.) to information processing decades before these technologies were used in mainstream business and research. In 1979 in connection with the normalizationof U.S.-China relations, President Jimmy Carter and Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping signed the Protocol Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology. It was then that Mr. Lee was asked to join the Department of Commerce to help negotiate and establish a bilateral management training program pursuant to that Agreement. This program established the National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Management Development in Dalian. The Center not only served U.S. governmental and commercial interests in China, but also fundamentally influenced China's modernization. Mr. Lee developed and managed the Center and its executive training program that introduced modern business practices and MBA courses to Chinese senior managers and students, who previously had no knowledge of American management concepts, in courses that were taught by visiting professors from leading U.S. university business schools, and other U.S. institutions and companies. For 10 years starting in July 1980, the Center trained over 1,200 Chinese senior managers. In 1985, Mr. Lee developed China's first MBA program at the Center working jointly with the State University of New York at Buffalo. The graduates of this program went on to become high-level leaders in Chinese government and business, shaping China's emergence into the modern age. For his work, Mr. Lee received many honors from both the U.S. and Chinese governments, including in 1989 the Gold Medal Award from the U.S. Department of Commerce for his lasting contribution to U.S.-Sino relations and U.S. commercial interests in China. Mr. Lee was a natural musician, taught himself piano, and was a gifted baritone serving as soloist for several local Washington, DC churches. He served as the choir director of DC's Chinese Community Church for over 30 years and then also was the music director of the Hua Xia Choral Group of Gaithersburg for 18 years from 1995 until 2013. Mr. Lee and his family were residents of Bethesda, MD, where they lived from 1965 until 2010 when Mr. Lee and his wife, Dora moved to Leisure World, Silver Spring. MD. He is survived by his loving wife, Dora Fugh Lee; his children, April (married to John Shea), Sarah (married to David Stanke), Handel (married to Jennifer Yang), and Helen (married to Todd Adams); and nine grandchildren, Richard Blissett, Terra Blissett, Hannah Stanke, Kayla Stanke, Zachary Stanke, James Stanke, Kyle Adams, Philip Lee, and Leighton Lee. His grandson, Caleb Adams predeceased him on January 8, 2017. Memorial service planned for 2018.Memorial service planned for 2018.