As the vibrant but small Anglo community of Karmiel, Galilee continues to shrink with the passing of many senior members, I want to pay tribute to fellow independent writer, Warren Sanford Lee, who enjoyed a very active recent return to Israel although in his late eighties.
A warm, often funny companion and a great writerly colleague, US-born Lee made important contributions at both Karmiel Writers Group meetings and sessions of the western Galilee branch of the Voices Israel poetry society in Nahariya.
During this time, Lee published a lengthy novel, Shoot for the Moon whose storyline opens in Lancashire, U.K. and for which he sought some guidance from my husband and me. Indeed, Brian Fink’s contribution is mentioned among other authorial acknowledgements.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Lee graduated from Brooklyn College before a three-year stint in the US Army took him to Korea as a translator with the Army Security Agency (ASA) – its then signals intelligence branch.
While at college Lee had enjoyed some experience as a sports writer with the New York Times and a later move to Pennsylvania saw him commissioned to write the lyrics to a cantata, The Song of the Stones, which was performed at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) convention. Later, he penned three plays, poetry and short stories.
Lee also enjoyed some local celebrity while living in western North Carolina when he wrote of the people in the region through a popular newspaper column, Connections.
Warren Sanford Lee leaves a devoted wife, Carolyn Levant-Lee who helped him with much of his work in later life. His first wife, Marcia and their three children all predeceased him.
© Natalie Wood (03 May 2019)
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