MEMBER PROFILE: Gene Lee
Gene Lee (Technical Management Consulting; Retired), one of the oldest members of the Rotary Club of San Francisco, has lived a long and very interesting life. Born in 1927 in Livingston (“where Foster Farms chickens come from”), a small farming town in San Joaquin County, his father ran a garage and auto repair shop serving area farmers in nearby Cressey, a culturally diverse community where half his classmates spoke a foreign language at home. Gene later wrote a book, Cressey, Land of Sand and Stars. “During the day,” he says, “our feet were firmly planted in the sand of Cressey, but our eyes were always looking up to the stars.”
After graduating from Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, Gene earned a master’s degree in theology at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, where he met his wife, Jeanne Marie, who received a master’s degree in religious education. Gene served as pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in San Anselmo for four years, then spent 18 years in Latin America, a year in Costa Rica to learn Spanish, then in Venezuela, where he pastored a small church, ran a rural center that included a clinic and a small demonstration farm, and helped young people earn a grade school diploma and go on to further study. In a valley of 1,000 people, he and his wife were the only ones who spoke English.
Then it was on to Mexico City, where the couple pioneered a new kind of ministry, serving as communication consultants in the countries bordering the Caribbean and Venezuela, Colombia and Trinidad, traveling extensively throughout Latin America. In 1966, the church asked them to go to Bogota “to take care of management problems with overseas personnel, 30 with graduate degrees. In two years, we solved all the problems except one.” Gene then spent a year at the New York City headquarters of the Presbyterian Church, working in the areas of budget and communications.
After earning a master’s degree at the University of Southern California, Gene moved back to Mexico City to take charge of the office of the American Management Association, which provides training for personnel in industry “from presidents to secretaries.” Meanwhile, Jeanne Marie remained in LA to earn a master’s degree in occupational therapy at USC. In 1973, Gene returned to LA to become general manager of Pyramid Films, an educational film company that he says proudly “received two Oscars while I was general manager.”
The couple, who will celebrate 67 years of married life on August 20, moved back to San Francisco in 1975, when Gene became regional vice president of the American Management Association. That’s when he joined the Rotary Club of San Francisco, which he enjoys because of “the great fellowship and the opportunity to engage in international projects. I am very proud of The Rotary Foundation and the San Francisco Rotary Club’s history of spreading Rotary to other areas and countries . . . Out of that came Rotary International.” He also points to Polio Plus as a great Rotary achievement.