Board member spotlight: Bill Lee

I am Bill Lee and joined the board of the International Friendship Center in 2018.

For 25 years, I worked as a reporter, then editor, then newsroom manager at newspapers in North Carolina, Florida and Kansas. In 1992, I moved to Jackson County, where I opened a used and rare bookstore for a few years. I began volunteering at Southwestern Community College as a GED tutor, which led to a full-time job in the college’s Continuing Education Department, supervising instructors in GED, Adult High School, Compensatory Education and ESL.

After I retired from SCC, I taught GED in a classroom where another teacher conducted an ESL class. I got to know many of the ESL students, who by and large were earnest, hardworking men and women who were trying to make new lives for themselves and their families here or who worked to send money home to their families in Mexico.

Although I live in Cullowhee, I found a spiritual home at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in Highlands. In the late teens, I became more active in the church, where I served on the Friends of Haiti and the Outreach Committee. I joined the Indivisible Highlands group. Meanwhile, I was tutoring ESL students in the class conducted jointly by the SCC and the Highlands Literacy Council.

I was made keenly aware of the fears of my ESL students that had arisen with the immigration policies of a new president, and I was frustrated that I didn’t know how to advise them beyond suggesting that they keep a low profile, obey speed and DUI laws, etc.

I had a chance to attend an information session for immigrants in Sylva conducted by an attorney for Blue Ridge Legal Services. I asked her after the meeting if she could do a similar program in Highlands, and she agreed. I pitched the idea to Indivisible Highlands, who agreed to sponsor an information dinner for immigrants. The IFC was co-sponsor. The event went off as planned and was well-attended.

I was invited to join the board, I suppose as a result of this event. I have served on the Planning Committee, and now am a member of the Marketing and Communications Committee. As Outreach chairman at Incarnation, I coordinated the annual Food Pantries Christmas barbecue dinner that benefits the Food Pantry and the Highlands Emergency Council Food Pantry. I continue to help with that event and to help unload the food truck on Fridays.