At 70, Patsy Lee is ‘still an educator at heart’, only now at the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center

A tomboy, the third of four children, Patsy says she was smart-alecky, and more interested in sports than school. The Tucson Chinese Cultural Center poster of her family’s market (Alan’s) shows a family photo with her scowling at the camera: her father wanted a picture; Patsy wanted a bike ride. In her first math class at Tucson High, Lee laughs, “Mrs. Siemens said, aren’t you David and Sylvia’s sister? [David would become a pharmacist; Sylvia an accountant] What happened to you?”

As children, they worked at the market. Their mom would put a stool at the counter, and “I’d sell beer,” Lee says. She attended Davis Elementary, John Spring Junior High — a year after it was integrated (“Blacks, Mexicans and Chinese”), and Tucson High School, where she couldn’t play sports. “There were no team sports for girls then — only individual,” she says. “And I got cut from tennis!”

After school she’d work at the market; later they all worked at the family restaurant, the Four Seasons.

It was as an undergrad at the UA that Lee played team sports — volleyball, basketball, and softball — and the point of education kicked in. Anatomy and physiology hooked her — “they made sense;” academics had application to athletics. She’d go on to earn a UA masters.

We look at the poster Lee compiled of the history of the Chinese community in Tucson, settling in Hispanic neighborhoods, “highlighting the intertwining history of…the two immigrant populations.” The purpose of The Tucson Chinese Cultural Center is to preserve Chinese culture and heritage, but also to share it with the non-Chinese community.