Profile Sketch on

Harold W. Lee

Freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.

John Milton, PARADISE LOST
Bk V, 1. 538

Some men must control; they live to conquer and rule. They are often admired and frequently they shape the course of history, but rarely are they loved. Meeker men are usually overlooked by the sensation-seeking mob or by chroniclers who record the unfolding of times, but such men, in spite of our neglect, are often exactly those who hold civilization together. They are often the ones who make us realize that it is not only possible but desirable to be in the community of man. Personal devotion, trust, affection, and respect, we find, are more lasting and nourishing to individuals than momentous legislation or sweeping victories, and always sorely needed in the wake of civic tyranny or crushing defeat. One man who cares is often the margin between hope and despair.

Professor Harold W. Lee is not a French teacher. He is a person who cares. Of course, he teaches French, and he possesses good credentials to qualify him for that job, but teaching French is only one of his many means to know, to serve, to love that portion of mankind he meets. His joy is God and his fellowmen. He gives those who know him hope: hope in the goodness of mankind and in the gracious love of a kind God.

Twenty years ago Brother Lee was called on a mission to France. It was not his first mission there, for when he was a young man just two years out of Calgary Normal School, an inexperienced young teacher of Arts and Sciences in the Alberta Public Schools and not too much older than some of his own students, he was called on his first mission to France where he served honorably a full two and a half years and then agreed to serve an additional six months, exhibiting American Indian costumes and giving lectures, discussions, and lessons on The Book of Mormon. But twenty years ago he was called to serve as the president of that mission. Many mission presidents have come and gone in the intervening years, and in that time and in many missions, it is not unusual for former presidents to become only names in the catalog of mission history, persons sometimes rarely remembered, whose influence and love depart with them. This cannot be said of Professor Lee.

Thomas Brown, who recently returned to BYU after being released as president of the France-Belgian mission, sent Dean Bruce B. Clark an account of some of the remarks still made by members and former missionaries about Brother Lee. They remember most his kindness, his civilities and thoughtfulness of others, his humble humanity. They admire him still after all these years because he was so unaffectedly human and never presumed to make his high office an excuse to elevate himself above others. They remember his willingness to counsel members at any time of the day or night as the need arose; they remember his teachableness and aversion to boasting; they remember evenings when he sat as a guest perfectly at home in a very humble house, genuinely enjoying the company and conversation provided; they remember his staying at the same hotels his missionaries could afford when they went from town to town to conduct conferences; they remember that he and Sister Lee always reserved the nicest, the most comfortable, the loveliest room in the mission home for members and friends who came to visit; they remember that he is a man whose life proclaimed his belief in Paul's injunction, "By love serve one another." (Galatians 5:13)

What formed Brother Lee's personality? Well, who can add up the influences or account for inborn tendencies? But one can surely say that his background had a great deal to do with what he has become. Raised by his widowed mother, one of the great influences in his life, Harold Lee never really knew his father, who died when Harold was just two years old. He has dim recollections of the funeral, but that is all. His mother brought Harold up in the Church, and as is typical of many young men, he accepted the Church but took it rather for granted. He had no burning testimony. In place of a firm testimony of the gospel, however, he did have an intense admiration for some of the local Church leaders. His mother constantly spoke high praise of such men as Hugh B. Brown, the stake president at the time, and Nathan Eldon Tanner, a bishop in one of the local wards, and he formed a notion in the back of his young mind that he wanted to be like them. So even though his understanding and acceptance of the gospel were not mature, he was kept from straying far by the examples of those he admired.

Of course, other influences entered his life too: a natural teen-age inclination toward what he calls smart-aleckiness and boisterous friends to egg him on. This combination led him not to any kind of wild excesses but to a mild rebellion. Visiting his friends became more important and more interesting than attending Church, and for about two years he simply dropped out of Church activity. His life changed abruptly when a local Church leader asked him to come to the temple to participate in proxy baptisms and to read a scripture to the other young people who attended the baptismal session. Harold was baffled; he simply didn’t know what to do. He had a longing to go to the temple but felt himself a hypocrite. He decided that he couldn't go; he wasn't worthy. But then it occurred to him that he could become worthy. He changed his attitude, refocused his activities, and committed himself to the Church. He went to the temple that time and read a scripture to the young people assembled, and he has never had the inclination to drop out of Church activity again. He considers himself especially lucky that that local Church leader approached him with the assignment, because he saw many of his friends drift away and never come back to the Church. One thing that Brother Lee doesn't say that must be true, though: he had to have a responsive spirit when that call came or he too would have continued to drift with his friends.

Committed to the Church as he was, Professor Lee still lacked a burning testimony. He didn't have the sure conviction of the gospel that he wanted. As is not unusual with young men in the Church, that conviction did not come until he was on his mission, and then it did not come with any kind of dramatic flash. After studying, praying, and working to convert others to the gospel, he found he had converted himself. One day he simply realized that what he had been working for all these years had come. He knew with a quiet assurance that the gospel is true. He took out his journal and recorded his feelings, and he wrote himself a little note, saying that if he ever came to doubt the gospel he could turn to these pages and bear testimony to himself that at this time in his life he knew with perfect certainty the truthfulness of the gospel.

After his mission Harold returned to Alberta, where he went back to teaching. He was, as a matter of fact, appointed principal of his high school. It was at this time that he met Rachel Low, his future wife. Actually, she and a friend had played a piano duet at Harold's mission farewell, but his thoughts were apparently elsewhere and he never noticed her. When he came home, however, things were quite different. He was young and handsome, and pretty Rachel, like Barkis, was willing, so they married and started saving their money for his future schooling. They came to BYU where Harold studied French, Spanish, and Italian. Before he graduated, President Franklin S. Harris called Brother Lee into his office and said that if he would study several more languages he could have a lifetime job at BYU. In those days, when jobs were tight, that offer sounded like a gift right from heaven, and Brother Lee set about accomplishing the stipulation laid down by President Harris. After finishing his B.A. and M.A. here, he went to Stanford and took a Ph.D.

One of the things that drove him to complete his Ph.D. was the attitude of Alberta society toward Mormons. The non-Mormon Canadians looked down on the local Latter-day Saints because, although the Mormons professed a belief in education and even produced a number of teachers, they seemed content with mediocre goals; they never aimed higher than the B.A. Brother Lee wanted to help elevate the image of his people, to show his fellow Canadians that members of the Church are as energetic and competent as they. One of his most cherished small triumphs in life occurred when he met one of his old school teachers at Stanford University. She was in California during the summer taking some brush-up courses and was surprised to see Brother Lee on the campus. "Well, what in the world are you doing here?" she asked. "Oh, just finishing up my Ph.D." So the Mormon boy from the little farming community in Alberta left his former teacher standing openmouthed in the California sunshine.

About five years after he finished the Ph.D., Professor Lee was called to serve as the chairman of the Department of Languages at BYU, a post that he only held for two years before he was called as president of the French mission. At that time the French mission was larger than it is today, taking in the whole of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the French-speaking portion of Switzerland, Spain, and Italy. Proselyting activities were actively carried on in all of the countries except Spain and Italy, where legal problems stood in the way. In Spain at the time no non-Catholic missionaries were tolerated at all, but the French mission president did have supervision of the branches of the Church at military bases there. In Italy, the situation was a little bit different: American (or any foreign) missionaries were not allowed to proselyte, but native Italians were. There were a few Italian Saints at the time, and President Lee met with them periodically to instruct and aid them in their missionary activities. It was under this system that the highly successful missionary work in Italy got its start.

There is an interesting sidelight to Brother Lee's having jurisdiction over Church affairs in Italy: he received a number of inquiries from apparently disgruntled Italian Catholic priests looking to improve their worldly situations. They offered to serve on foreign missions and wanted to know what the financial arrangements were. He wrote letters to each of them explaining the fundamentals of the gospel and the operation of the Church, inviting them to come to Switzerland for further discussions. He has not, unfortunately, heard of any of them joining the Church.

When he was released from his mission, he returned to BYU and the chairmanship of the Department of Languages, which position he held until 1960. Because of his long experience in the department, Brother Lee has been asked to compile the history of the French Department for the centennial celebration of Brigham Young University in 1975. His service to the University has been typically quiet, but hardly without importance. He has accomplished a great deal. He was, for example, the first director of the French Semester Abroad Program in Grenoble and has served in the foreign semester program several times.

Now that retirement is near, Professor Lee, like so many of the people in our college, has no intention of settling down to a life of ease. He has several things he wants to do which retirement will finally let him get to. Of course, he wants to travel: he hopes to spend a part of every summer in Switzerland, and he wants very much to get back to the Orient. Then he particularly wants to see central Africa and South Africa, where he has never been before. He has a scholarly book that he is working on, too, The Twentieth Century French Roman Fleuve (i.e., the cyclical novel), a study of the historical and sociological reliability of forty-four volumes of modern fiction by three leading French novelists. He's been working on the project for years, and he is anxious to get to it, but he has another project to finish first: he has promised his colleagues to put together an instructional packet of color slides and audio tapes for use in teaching French culture and civilization. He is anticipating his own project, but his colleagues must come first.