Catching Up With: Sammy Lee

Bryce Alderton

This week marked the first time in Irrelevant Week’s 27-year history

that 81-year-old Huntington Beach resident and Olympic Gold Medalist

Sammy Lee didn’t crack jokes alongside longtime friend and IW founder

Paul Salata and other attendees at the dinners or the awards

presentations.

Turns out traveling got in the way.

Lee returned to his Huntington Beach home Wednesday after visiting a

friend in New Orleans, two days after IW XXVII began Monday. Irrelevant

Week honors the last player chosen in the NFL draft. This year’s Mr.

Irrelevant is Houstan Texans’ defensive end Ahmad Miller.

Even though Lee wasn’t at the Lowsman Trophy presentation Tuesday, he

wasn’t forgotten.

“I guess they made a joke about me,” said Lee chuckling. “I usually

tell triple-X rated stories. I clean them up a little bit since its

coeducational. I’m usually the hit man (Salata) picks on. Then I pick on

him.”

Lee and Salata have known each other since the two attended Franklin

High School in Los Angeles in the mid-1920s.

They also attended USC, where Salata played football and Lee studied

for his medical degree.

The week’s format hasn’t changed much in 27 years according to Lee,

but he said more people now attend the dinner.

“I think more people acknowledge it is a great thing to honor the last

draftee,” Lee said. “Millions of kids would love to be the last draftee

for the NFL. I think it’s great.”

Now retired from his private practice for 11 years, Lee keeps himself

busy by spending time with his three grandchildren, golfing and just last

month visiting Ground Zero at the World Trade Center in New York City to

celebrate with the rest of the 1952 U.S. Olympic Team.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Lee’s Olympic Gold Medal in

platform diving at the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Finland. He also won a

gold in the same event and a bronze medal in springboard diving in the

1948 games in London.

Lee’s gold medal in 1952 came on his 32nd birthday, but he almost

didn’t make the trip to Helsinki with his responsibility as a

Korean-American army doctor during the Korean War looming.

But words from his coach quickly changed his mind.

“The U.S. Olympic Diving Coach said I should make a comeback, and if I

didn’t Mexico would win the gold medal,” Lee recalled.

It was a good thing Lee listened to his coach, because he captured the

gold ahead of silver medalist Joaquin Capilla Perez, from Mexico.

“I was competing for my country, for Uncle Sam and I wasn’t going to

let anybody beat an American,” Lee said.

Also in 1952 Lee became a ranking Major and stayed that way until 1955

when he resigned his commission after 31 years of service.

That same year he and wife Roz moved to Santa Ana, and they had their

first of two children, Pamela. In 1960, their second child, Sammy Lee II

was born.

Lee soon began his private practice in Santa Ana, becoming only the

second Asian doctor in Orange County at the time, he recalled.

Then in 1976, he decided to start giving something back - he started

coaching divers at Santa Ana High School, among them Greg Louganis, for

free at night and on weekends.

“I did it for love,” Lee said. “I wanted to keep America No. 1.”

Lee began diving 70 years ago and still likes to swim for exercise. He

has also taken up golf, which he said has been a struggle.

“I unfortunately started playing golf,” Lee said. “It’s the most

frustrating thing I ever took up.”

But he gets the most enjoyment from spending time with his three

grandchildren.

Though most people won’t win an Olympic Gold Medal, Lee described a

related feeling to holding that shiny honor, one moment many have

experienced.

“Holding them I’m reliving the victory stand, holding the gold medal,”

Lee said. “You’ll know how it feels to hold an Olympic medal when you

hold your grandchildren.”

Born in Fresno in 1920, Lee’s father was one of the very first Korean

immigrants to the U.S., arriving in California in 1907.