Remembering Mr. Lee
Carl Damian Lee
4 November 1944 - 29 May 2024
Carl was born in Jamaica to Isaac Alexander and Edith Lee in 1944, the last of three children with his older siblings being his sister Phyllis (Moi), and brother Bernard (Bunny). At the time, the family lived and ran businesses, I.A. Lee & Brother and in downtown Kingston. The intention was for the family to move to Taiwan, so they sold the business and moved house while they waited for the ship to return. However with the rise of communism, the ship never did come back, and the family remained in Jamaica.
Carl’s father died in 1953, and as part of a larger Chinese family and community, his mother and siblings spent the next few years moving around downtown Kingston, and living with different family members. By the mid-fifties, Carl was living with his mother, Moi and his mother’s sister’s family, which included his cousins Rodney, Andrew and Maureen on Windward Road, whilst Bunny lived with their Uncle Donnie and Aunt Barbara. They moved to Mountain View Avenue, right across the street from Sir Alexander Bustamante, Jamaica Labour Party’s then leader, where they enjoyed the added benefit of his personal guards’ 24-hour presence.
Carl attended Blake Preparatory, Camperdown School, and St. George's College. He played table tennis and badminton; excelled in swimming (placed second on the swim team at St. George’s); enjoyed the outdoors as a Boy Scout; and was an active member of Holy Rosary Church, serving as altar boy. Carl’s love for the ocean started in his teen years when he began renting row boats from fishermen and spending all night in Kingston Harbour. This was also the start of his lifelong love of animals, with several aquarium fish, guinea pigs, rabbits, and birds. His first German Shepherd puppy - Lady Kel - was bought just after high school and was a welcome addition to the home where he and his mother lived at the time. His first race horse, on the other hand, had to be bought under the pseudonym Jack Rabbit, so that his mother wouldn’t find out!
Carl spent a lot of time with his cousins enjoying a carefree and happy life while growing up. Aside from the usual house parties, movies and beach picnics, there were memorable events such as sleeping outdoors after getting caught in the dark hiking up to Blue Mountain Peak, a never-to-be-repeated attempt to ride bicycles from Windward Road to the airport and back, and multiple flat tyres on a country trip to christen his first car, a Renault Gordini. By 1970 however, almost all of Carl’s family had migrated to either the States or Canada. Although both his sister and brother applied to have him follow, Carl chose to remain in Jamaica.
After high school he began his professional life working first at Jamaica Worcester Pottery where he supervised the staff who hand painted the pottery which was imported from England. He also worked at Carreras Ltd., T. Geddes Grant, Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. and had his own office supplies company. His career path continued to be wide and varied throughout his life and included accountant, racehorse trainer, stock market broker, SCUBA instructor and table tennis coach.
He began SCUBA Diving roughly around 1977, advancing to becoming a NAUI instructor in 1983 (and also a BSAC instructor at some other time). At this time, involvement in SCUBA diving and the club became an integral part of his life, and he partook in several memorable events such as the installation of a tyre reef at Cow Bay, the translocation of some manatees (which got him on a national stamp of Jamaica) and different out-of-country SCUBA trips. He was very active in the Jamaica Sub-Aqua Club in different roles.
It was also through the Sub-Aqua Club that he met his life partner, Deirdre in 1980. Through her, he was introduced to the world of sailing, and later in 1982, raised a sunken wooden sailboat from the Royal Jamaica Yacht Club’s Harbour. Life then became weekends of diving, and sailing trips and they moved into one of his mother’s apartments in Worthington Towers, New Kingston.
In 1986 he became a father, first to Heather, and then in 1987 to Simone. At this point, packing for diving, sailing and children became far too burdensome for them, and he set aside those hobbies. In 1989, he encouraged the family to take on a timeshare in Negril, which started a few decades of annual trips for them. He was a devotedand supportive father, present in all aspects of the girls’ lives. It was also during this time that he dabbled as an official racehorse trainer (from 1995). In the early 2000s, the well maintained gear was dusted off so that Heather and Simone could be taught to dive, which not only resulted in several weekend dive trips as a family, but the training of some 20 new SCUBA students under his ‘ScubaJam’ enterprise. In 2003 he took on the job of Table Tennis coach at Immaculate Conception High School, where he took them to many podiums. He continued long after the girls graduated, and stopped only when the pandemic closed the schools in 2020. He liked being kept in the loop by his young trainees, who had him up to date on social media platforms and new music.
In 2020 he also became a grandpa, or Papa, to Jake and in 2024 to Alana. He enjoyed spending time on his computer playing games and listening to music, watching and entertaining the grandchildren (more so Jake) when they visited, feeding his wild birds at home, and watching the world go by from the patio. A chronic COPD sufferer, his health declined rapidly in May 2024 and he passed peacefully on the morning of 29 May 2024.
Tributes to Daddy
We would like to ask you to leave tributes for Daddy at this site. We encourage you to upload any photos you may have, and share memories. In time, we will use these to print a memorable book for us to keep.
My Father Made Two Mistakes
Remembrance by Heather Lee Matalon
My father made two mistakes.
One was with his health. Kyla and I half-joked about it in reference to both our fathers (because what can you do?) and our medical diagnosis was a condition we liked to call “aggressive auto-neglect.” A smoker since 9, a lifelong avoider of the doctor, and a man committed to his 2 patties a day - it was a true miracle his body brought him to where it did.
So that was his first mistake.
I’m happy to say however, that Daddy did get a few things right. For starters, I’m not sure I know a person who met him and didn’t like him. He was a kind, humble, easygoing man; nothing really got under his skin. (Until it did, which is a whole other story, because misplacing his coffee spoon was akin to the theft of the crown jewels the way he went on!) But that aside, he was always happy to chat with or listen to anyone and I think because of this, we are constantly encountering relative strangers who remember him fondly. Messages would always come back that so and so says hi. And Daddy being Daddy would always be so surprised that they remembered who he was.
Daddy got also computers right. Educated only up to 10th grade, he saw that computers would be the next big thing, and enrolled himself in a course. Thanks to that he remained fairly up-to-date on new tech and would build his own computers from scratch. Maybe this love of tech was why later in life (age 68), he entered the world of online gaming – a game called Guild Wars to be exact. Cleaning out his stuff after his death, we found his letters introducing himself and his avatar Peelar to his very probably teenage online compatriots. His letters may just be the cutest thing I have ever seen, and they are shared on his memorial website.
Another thing Daddy got, was animals. He had a way with them, and taught us the correct way to approach all animals - from a puppy to a horse, to a horse with a foal. Uncle Rodney tells us that as a young teen Daddy kept homing pigeons, guinea pigs and rabbits at their home on Winward Road. Is it any wonder then, that at our own home we had 40+ guinea pigs, about the same number of budgies, fish, dogs, some interloping cats, Cocoa The Free Roaming Cockatiel in the house, and briefly, a snapping turtle living in a kiddie pool on the patio. Even the wild grass quits in the yard would eat from his hand, and he often shared his lunch (the patty crust) with a lizard who would appear at his feet on the patio. When he noticed that “his” grass quits didn’t like a type of seed in the mixed bag he would buy, he would sit there picking them out. He bred dogs briefly in our childhood, and each owner was sent home with an owner’s manual in the form of a letter that he did up on the typewriter that started with “Congratulations on your new puppy!” This doesn’t seem that strange today, but trust me - breeding German Shepherd guard dogs in the early 90’s in Jamaica - it was avant garde. He dabbled in horse training, which was also brief, when he ended up taking on other stables’ horses because he didn’t want them to be neglected. He even fed one man’s stable after he died, knowing full well that the estate would never have the money to repay him. When our last dog was dying, I think I got no fewer than 5 calls at the office telling me I needed to come home immediately. Even fish. This was before mine and Simmi’s time but Mummy and Daddy acquired a pistol shrimp for their salt water tank. Fun fact about pistol shrimp:- they can produce a sound with their claws that creates enough acoustic energy to break glass. So, coming home one weekend, they found the fish languishing in about 4 inches of water, and all the water leaking out of a crack in said glass. They rescued them, and Daddy decided to free them in the ocean. But not before prepping them for release, scouting the perfect location, and taking them down in stages to acclimatize them to pressure and temperature.
Of all the things he got right, he absolutely nailed being our daddy. He was my first best friend. Except of course during my teens and we were mortal enemies when he wouldn’t let me go to parties. The weekend would come around, I would be rejected from attending that weekend’s all-important event, and I would vow never to speak to my father again. But if you’ve ever had a grudge match with a Chiney man … forget it. Daddy continued living his life not the least bit concerned about me withdrawing speech, and usually it didn’t last long before I had to tell him something. And then he would respond and life would go on as normal. And instead of these absolutely critical parties, Daddy would take us to the CBA on Saturday nights and play table tennis with us till – no joke - 1:30 or 2 o’clock in the morning. And so it wasn’t long before Daddy was back to being my best friend. I would tell him all mundane parts about my day. In fact, I had to catch myself because, when Roman’s Funeral Home was treating us so good, I thought – I need to tell Daddy about how good the service is here.
He was an athletic man in his time and taught us every sport he played and then …. we chose gymnastics. But he wasn’t sad we didn’t choose any of his sports, and in fact he would come up to the Summer House at Immaculate and watch us, coaching us after class based on what he’d seen. He recorded gymnastics events on VHS for us and we would watch them till the tape inside wore out. When Simmi took on hockey, Daddy would go and watch her games. When she took up table tennis, he became Immaculate’s coach and took them to the school’s first victory in the sport. In fact he continued being the school’s coach long after we left, right up to the pandemic (17 years). There was Mr. Lee walking around outside the cafeteria smoking and wandering back in to teach a little table tennis. Just think on that image please.
I had a long list of random cute things that was life with our Daddy. When I sat to write this memorial, I realized I can’t possibly list them all here, nor do I want to. But there are a few that bear repeating – like how he would wrap his donation to the church with a $100 bill so no one would know how much he was actually giving; how he taught us to swim so young I don’t even know a time I couldn’t swim; how he would sit and make playdough figurines with us; how he was late for everything in life except picking us up every day from school.
But especially when it came on to bedtime. For more years than you would probably expect, Daddy would sit with us and sing us IZ’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” until we fell asleep, me playing with his elbow. Which brings me finally to my father’s second mistake. It wasn’t us Daddy - it was you -who were “Unforgettable”.
I want to thank my very tiny family, which just got even smaller, but is just as strong. To my mummy, who is the other half of who I am today. Every compliment I have ever received belongs 50:50 to my parents. And to Simmi, who is just the best – how she finds the time I will never know. To Mayer, who is objectively the best husband the world has ever seen. And to our very, very large extended family, we love you all.
Other Memories
Introducing Peelar...
As Heather mentioned in her Remembrance, Daddy spent a lot of time playing a RPG called Guild Wars. We found some printed letters he did to introduce himself to others in the game and thought they were too cute to not share.
Daddy's Music
And finally we wanted to share some music with you. Some of these are songs that mean something tos us because of him. Like Nat King Cole's 'Unforgettable' that Heather shared with you above. Or Roger Whittaker's 'The Last Farewell' which was the first song that he recorded to tape for Simmi.
The rest are songs that Daddy liked - often sending us the links by email. We hope you enjoy them.
