Renowned Forensics Specialist Henry Lee Speaks as Fourth Annual Krause Fellow
By PengTao Teng ‘07
News Staff Reporter
Laughter and excitement filled the PMAC auditorium on the evening of May 11th, as Dr. Henry Lee delivered the fourth Krause Fellowship lecture.
Dr. Lee, Chief Emeritus of the Division of Public Safety of Connecticut’s Department of Public Safety, was invited by the Choate Science Department as the Charles Krause ‘51 Fellow in Rhetoric to speak to the school. Teachers were directed to lighten their assignments for that night, for the special program took up more than half of students’ evenings.
Before the 7:30 lecture, a few students, selected by the science department, were invited to dine with the renowned, a forensic scientist. In his lecture, Dr. Lee noted the extraordinary intelligence and knowledge of those students with whom he met.
The lecture began with an introduction of the science department head, Mr. Larry Stowe, by Mr. Zachary Goodyear, the coordinator of the Krause Fellowship. Mr. Stowe gave a run-down of Dr. Lee’s life and numerous accomplishments, including his role in high profile cases such as the OJ Simpson trial and the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey. Mr. Stowe also introduced Dr. Lee’s wife, Margaret, and an associate of Dr. Lee’s, Elaine Pagliaro who taught science at Choate and Rosemary Hall from 1973-1980. As Mr. Stowe concluded his introduction and Dr. Lee walked towards the podium, students gave Dr. Lee a roaring welcome of applause.
Dr. Lee began his talk by complimenting Choate, saying that he himself wishes he could be a Choate student, because the school not only provides an “excellent, excellent education”, but also teaches its students how to “be a human being.”
He then told students about his background, in particular, his first days in America, when he landed in the US equipped with a little English and a few dollars. He also gave a captivating anecdote about his awkward interaction at his first American dinner and commented about the unnecessary complexity of the English language in comparison to other languages, especially in the eyes of foreigners such as himself.
Speaking about his years in America, Dr. Lee said, “after so many years, from 1965, when I first came [to the US] with fifty dollars in my pocket, forty years later, I still don’t speak English, but I sure have a lot of money in my pocket.”
Raised by a single mom with thirteen children, Dr. Lee holds his mother in the highest esteems, which he reminded the audience from time to time.
“People ask me ‘who do I fear the most,’ I say ‘my mother,’” said Dr. Lee. “People ask me ‘who do you respect the most,’ I say ‘my mother.’”. Time after time, as Dr. Lee explained, people would call his mother when they needed a service from him (or get him out of retirement; Dr. Lee joked that he had “retired three times), and when she pressures him, he could do nothing but comply.
Dr. Lee, formerly Connecticut’s Chief Criminalist, who has traveled to a lot of countries around the world, also reminded students of the opportunity and fairness which defines America more than any other country.
“In the United States, as long as you work hard and set the goal, you can achieve.”
Dr. Lee used himself as an example of how hard work and perseverance can bring about success. He found his first job as a junior technician at the NYU Molecular Biology laboratories, where he cleaned test tubes. His three co-workers and his supervisor were laid-back, drinking beer and watching TV in a “hideout” in the basement, and told him, “Don’t work hard.” Ignoring these temptations (“I didn’t want to drink my life away,” said Lee), he took on the five busiest laboratories to clean by himself, seeking a challenge and an opportunity. Eventually, he established a connection with a researcher, and within a few years, earned his masters and Ph.D. When this mentor won the Nobel Prize, Lee was quickly promoted to senior research scientist, and began the path towards a career.
Time usage and goal planning were two of the central ideas that Dr. Lee brought out in his lecture. Again, he explained how these themes had been tied in heavily with his life.
When Lee was a little boy, he dreamed of becoming a basketball star.
“I went home every night and tried to stretch myself” in order to be tall enough to play, explained the less than six foot Lee, “until one night, I found that I had an impossible dream.”
Goals, he explained should be rational and achievable. “Each of us has a limit,” said Dr. Lee. But if we make goals within the limit and work hard to achieve it, we will.
Instead of planning to write hundreds of pages a day for a book, Lee says, “I write one page a day...after one year, that’s 365 pages...that’s a book.”
Dr. Lee also used some statistical data to illustrate his point about using time diligently.
For example, the average person “works 1600 hours a year,” said Lee, out of the 8760 hours in a year, and sleeps more than three thousand hours a year.
Later on in the lecture, Dr. Lee told the audience a little about the work he did in some of his recent or most famous cases, like revisiting the evidence surrounding the Kennedy assassination and helping to solve the “Woodchipper” murder case. Unfortunately, because the set of the spring musical, “The Sound of Music,” had taken up a lot of room on the PMAC stage, the PowerPoint slideshow that Dr. Lee prepared could not be shown.
Dr. Lee also shared his opinions about television shows like CSI that focus on forensics-based investigation of crimes, and told the audience that in real life, forensics is not as easy as it looks on TV.
Throughout the lecture, Dr. Lee asked the audience questions, and whenever someone shouted out an answer, threw a small souvenir, a tiny golden police badge pin, to that person. Towards the end of the lecture nearly half of the audience began shouting out responses when he asked questions.
The lecture finally concluded with a question and answer session.
Despite the wonders of forensics in today’s world, people still formulate their own opinions on marquee cases no matter how much scientific evidence is presented. For instance, half-jokingly, Lee said, “At that time, when the case just happened, 80% of Caucasian think OJ is guilty. Eighty percent of minorities think he’s totally innocent. One hundred percent of Chinese don’t give a [explative].”
After the lecture, a reception was held in the Science Center, and students were able to ask Dr. Lee more questions. Some questions included an inquiry on the current Duke Lacrosse affair, the Taiwan presidential assassination attempt of last year, the investigation of which Dr. Lee is a part, and another about his early study habits in school.
When the evening was over, a thread on Choate’s Current Events Forum on the FristClass server opened up, and all the students who posted wrote that they were extremely impressed with the lecture.
“I thought he certainly had an interesting point with sleep. Though a person needs sleep to live, he is right in saying that it really does waste a lot of the time we have in life.” wrote Alexander Cuffe ‘09.
“Dr. Lee was an amazing speaker. He knew exactly how to get the crowd’s attention, with his great sense of humor and his gold pins. His stories and lessons were very interesting, and of course his fame got people’s attention as well,” wrote Suril Kantaria ‘09.
“I thought that he was the most engaging speaker yet,” wrote John Tiholiz ‘07. “I was not bored once during the program.”
