Maurice Lee

Maurice Harmon Lee (1932-2014)

Maurice Harmon Lee passed away at his home on October 25, 2014.  He was born on March 28, 1932 to Samuel Perry Lee and Bertha Harmon in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Maurice was sealed to Helen Faucett on April 16, 1956, in the Salt Lake Temple.  Together, they had three sons:  Marc (Julie), Gary (Janet) and Paul (Merrie) Lee, and two daughters:  Gayle (Dave) Olsen and Susie (Mark) Lawson.

He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, and for many years afterwards, attaining the rank of major.  His assignments enabled him to serve his God and his country in many places around the world, including France, Japan, California, Alabama, Utah, and Vietnam.  After moving to Utah, he worked for 26 years as an operations manager at the LDS Church Distribution Center and as a purchasing agent at the LDS Church office building. He held many callings in the LDS church, including bishop and stake president.  Maurice and Helen fulfilled a mission in Charleston, West Virginia.  Together, they worked in the Bountiful Temple for 10 years.

Maurice is survived by his wife and five children, 21 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren (with one on the way), brother Noel (Marilyn) and sister Cherie (John) McDonald.  He is preceded in death by his father, mother, second mother Chloris Rich, and six brothers:  Wayne (Frances), Ruel (Gloria), Stuart (Beverly), Claude (Merlyn), Boyd (Rita) and Dean (Lorna).

Funeral services will be held Wednesday, October 29, 2014 at 11 a.m. at the Kaysville 2 ^nd North chapel, 875 E. 200 N.  Friends may visit family on Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at Lindquist’s Kaysville Mortuary, 400 N. Main, and from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday at the church.  Interment, Kaysville City Cemetery.

The newspaper obituary reveals the facts of a life well-lived, but is more like a flat black-and-white photo.  It doesn’t begin to reveal the character and color in the life of a friend, son, brother, husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather like Maurice Lee.

Dad was creative in the extreme, and he was always serious about our fun.  The Halloween masks he made for us were envied by the other kids.  He loved to devise games for us, and I remember that he made a hard paper racing track designed for roly poly bugs.  Whenever we got a new appliance, we had no interest in it; we eagerly waited to see what dad would make out of the box.  He used one of mom’s kitchen knives, sawing away at the box to create a fort or hiding place for us.  As an air force pilot, dad was often away on duty.  When he returned, he wore his green flight suit.  He brought candies and toys hidden in the thousand zippered pockets, and we swarmed over him to collect our treats.  One hot summer day when the air conditioner couldn’t keep up, he filled a wading pool and put it in our bathroom.  He sent us to put on our swim suits and the fun began and kept going as our bathroom was transformed into a homemade waterpark.  Gary remembers flying kites with dad.  Dad would cut a slit in a paper plate and attach it to the kite string, then add more plates, letting the wind push the plates up the string.

For the grandkids, he made swords out of newspaper, and a variety of paper airplanes.  In the summer, whenever he rolled out the plastic slippery slide, he always doused it with a hefty amount of dish soap, to make it extra slick and fast for the grandkids.

He was fascinated by life and learning.  He loved to show us interesting things, like an orb weaver waiting in its intricate web by the patio door that we watched for as long as it stayed there, the spider being fed a steady supply of bugs as we lured them in with the click of the porch light switch.  He took Marc fishing once on the coast, having no luck with the fish, but he found an anemone and fed it pieces of lunch, to Marc’s delight.  Another happy memory is a dark night spent hunting toads with flashlights on the hills near our house, putting the fist-sized squirmers in an old metal tub in the yard until we had captured dozens, then let them loose.

He loved to cook for the family, and served up homemade salsa for the grandkids who came over for one of his many game nights.  The first question he usually asked family visitors, as soon as they walked in the door was, “Are you hungry?”  Then he would run down a list of available foods.  Like a runner in the starting blocks, he was poised and ready to vault into the kitchen to whip up the meal of choice.  Anyone visiting from out of state could expect a full-course breakfast in the morning.  Dad made it a point to rise early and have the meal ready and waiting as soon as the first family member woke up.  He liked to learn everyone’s favorite foods and have them on hand whenever they visited:  Soup for Jordan, shrimp salad or chocolate for Gayle and fruit slushes for Susie.  He cranked out loaves of zucchini bread to give away to family and friends.  He often whistled as he worked through his planned menus for holiday buffets.  He enjoyed setting up a spread of Oriental food for his annual New Year’s party and spent days getting the food ready.  He was proud of his garden, and loved to serve us BLTs made with his legendary home-grown tomatoes, and we loved to eat them.  Food was love, and he sent us all home loaded up with produce and leftovers.

He has always loved jokes, funny stories, and pranks.  He gleefully told us about a prank he pulled as a young man.  He pretended to have cut his hand at work, and came home with it covered in gauze. His mother carefully changed his bandage, unwinding it sympathetically, until she found the note in his palm that read, “April Fool’s!”  His favorite line:  “I ran for the door, and she ran for the broom.”

Most of our family vacations were disastrous, but memorable.  They usually involved a flat tire, vapor lock, overheating radiators, and somehow ending up a few miles outside of Evanston.  Dad drove a car the way he flew airplanes, like the road was as open as the sky, and his to own, much to our dismay, and the alarm of fellow drivers.

He doctored up birthday cards, personalizing them by carefully changing the messages and substituting our heads cut out from photos.  One of our family home evenings consisted of cutting up photos and creating get-well cards for Marc when he spent a few days in the hospital.

Dad was a hero to us; to Susie, quite literally.  When we were little, Dad was stationed in Japan for a few years, and our family was relocated there.  Enroute, we spent a week in Hawaii.  During that week, we stayed in a beach house and played in the surf every day.  We found some other children to play with and played a game of chasing a leaf or stick that one of them threw.  It was thrown too far out, and Susie and the two boys fell into water over their heads.  Dad saw what had happened and came sprinting out into the water, grabbing Susie and the two boys.  No doubt he saved all their lives that day.  We kids were envious because Susie got to ride in an ambulance.

Dad was an avid journal-writer.  An excerpt detailing his courtship with Helen that he wrote a few years ago ends with this note to her:  “…let me assure you, if you ever had any doubts, that through our courtship, engagement and marriage—over a span of almost 52 years as of this writing, you have been, and continue to be my only love.”  (Sigh.)  Mom says she still remembers how glad she was to see him when he was stationed in France.  After a long and uncomfortable trip by boat and then train in her very pregnant condition with their first child, Mom was thrilled to finally be reunited with dad in Paris.

Dad had zillions of stories from his life experiences, many from his air force years.  He told us about gibbons in trees that served as sentries and made noise to warn of intruders in Vietnam.  He told us about a distressed father he noticed in an air terminal on Wake Island.  He felt prompted to ask him what was wrong and whether he could help.  Because he intervened, he expedited the delivery of some much-needed formula to the man’s baby, who couldn’t tolerate any other food, and was failing fast.  He was certain he had heavenly help to bless that little family.  Later, he met a Thai taxi driver in Bangkok and learned about his family and difficulty of getting fares, competing with other drivers.  Noting that servicemen like himself often had layovers in Bangkok with time on their hands, dad rounded up a magazine featuring nearby attractions, a notebook and some glue and scissors, and did a pre-computer days cut-and-paste job, compiling a 30-page tour guide for the taxi driver.  The binder was full of pictures and details about interesting places:  a silk factory, or a snake farm where people could watch cobras being milked for venom.  The taxi driver, with his limited English-speaking skills, could simply show his notebook to a military person, saying “Read, please.”  With the increase in the number of fares, the taxi driver could significantly improve his standard of living.  Dad looked out for people, and wanted to improve their lives.  To that end, dad was involved in missionary work, and proud to have performed the first convert baptism in Vietnam. Whenever he saw someone else’s need, dad was intent on finding a way to help.

He told us about pranks and mistakes.  He told us about close calls and near misses.

Nearly every story reflected a spiritual element, where he relied on the Lord, got an answer to prayers, or got inspiration and help beyond his own powers.  He was acutely aware of God’s power and influence in his life, in even the smallest things, and he served faithfully in his church callings.  He was anxious to have us know and feel the power of God for ourselves.  His eyes glistened and he got serious and reverent when he spoke of his experiences and God’s part in them.  One of the apostles of the Church spoke of a man who didn’t really have any hobbies in his life; the Gospel was always foremost.  Our father is like that.  He liked to do certain things, but he LOVES the Gospel and his Heavenly Father, and his Savior, Jesus Christ.

Dad took his roles in life seriously:  Husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather.

Faithful son of God.

With honor and love, we say goodbye for just a moment.