Lives are lived. They span decades; they inhabit moments, eras, and epochs. For all of us, our lives thread their way through the currents of the day, but few of us shape the tide of national history. Sammy Lee, however, surfed historical crests and, as news of his death reached the public this past weekend, his life received the proper attention it deserved in the pages of the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.
Much has been made of his contributions to ending segregation in California and fighting communism abroad, his accomplishments as a gold medalist diver, and his success as a doctor. Indeed, even in his last days as he struggled with dementia, Lee remained a conduit for our national story over the century.
Sammy Lee, wearing Oxy trunks, dives in this 1944 photo courtesy of the USC Libraries - Los Angeles Examiner Collection.
Lee began his life as America turned inward.
Born Aug. 1, 1920, in Fresno, California, the son of Korean immigrants, Lee began his life as America turned inward. World War I had proven a disappointment, the War to End All Wars , ended with a frustrating show of caprice by European powers. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and in the years that followed, Congress passed new immigration laws that sharply limited immigration from Southeastern and Eastern Europe and doubled down on restrictions placed on Asia, completely banning newcomers from the region. This is to say nothing of the alien land laws that California and other western states had passed earlier in the century, which prevented many Asians from owning property. That Lee died in a similar moment of retrenchment should not be ignored.
Lee came of age in a segregated California. Admittedly, white Californians did not exert segregation as severely as their Midwestern or Southern counterparts, but segregation undoubtedly shaped his life and the lives of others like him. By the late 1920s, he and his family had moved to the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. He practiced his diving skills at Brookside Pool in nearby Pasadena, but could only do so on Wednesdays, so called International Day - a perverse framing of segregation as cosmopolitanism and the only time Latino, Black and Asian Californians could use the facilities. As it so happened, Brookside cleaned its pool every Wednesday after its non-white patrons had finished swimming, a common practice across the U.S. as fears of interracial sexuality and racist ideas about hygiene reinforced segregation's tenets. White families picketed the Lees presence in Highland Park; Lee also heard the occasional racial slur in his neighborhood and at school.
No matter - Lee saw himself as an American and one deserving of the same rights as any other citizen. When a vice principal at Franklin High School advised him to take his name off the ballot for student government president, Lee barely blinked, telling him: My fellow classmates do not look at me as Korean. They look at me as a fellow American. His father, an immigrant to America, encouraged Lee to not retreat from his nation or his ethnicity. Son, you were born a free American, the elder Lee told his son. You can do anything you want because youre free, but if you are not proud of the color of your skin and the shape of your eyes, youll never be accepted.
Lee became Los Angeles city diving champion in 1939, won three national collegiate diving championships while attending Occidental College, and then followed these achievements with Olympic gold medals in 1948 and 1952. At the 1948 Olympics, Lee was among the first two Asian-Americans to earn gold (along with Victoria Manalo Draves, who did the same two days prior) and the first American to win consecutive gold medals in platform diving. Attending medical school at the University of Southern California, he completed his work in three years on the military's dime as a member of the Army Reserve. Lee later trained Olympic medalists Greg Louganis and Bob Webster; both legends in the sport. Louganis, a four time gold medalist remains arguably the best-known American diver ever, and Webster, under Lee's tutelage, became the second American to win back-to-back gold medals in platform diving. Intentionally or unintentionally, Louganis also emerged as a pioneering role model for LGBT youth.
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From 1946 to 1955, Lee served in the military, including a tour of duty in the Korean War, in which he was stationed just outside of Seoul as an Army major and medical officer. During these years and afterward, he helped spread the message of American democracy across Asia for the State Department even as Asian-Americans could find no purchase in the suburbs of California, an issue that Lee would soon encounter himself.
Lee, in his U.S. Army uniform, accepts the 1953 Sullivan Award as an amateur athlete. Lee told the press he was embarrassed to accept the award because, as an Army officer, he had been out of competition for so long. Photo courtesy of the USC Libraries - Los Angeles Examiner Collection.
Sammy Lee joins other American athletes with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Photo courtesy of the USC Libraries - Los Angeles Examiner Collection.
Sammy Lee, M.D., poses in this 1957 photo courtesy of the USC Libraries - Los Angeles Examiner Collection.
In many ways, California epitomized the nation's Cold War mindset. World War II and the military-industrial complex it spawned built the modern Golden State, especially in the Southern California region. Military conflicts in East Asia from World War II through Vietnam resulted in larger flows of Asian immigrants to the state, forcing adaptations to immigration law. Lee's own time in the military underscores this dynamic, but so, too, would his return to
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Lives are lived. They span decades; they inhabit moments, eras, and epochs. For all of us, our lives thread their way through the currents of the day, but few of us shape the tide of national history. Sammy Lee, however, surfed historical crests and, as news of his death reached the public this past weekend, his life received the proper attention it deserved in the pages of the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.
