Dear Lee familiy: my condolences on your loss.  I only learned about Arthur's death through the NMH Alumni Magazine.  We had fallen out of touch but he was such a big and important part of my time at Northfield Mt. Hermon.  I recently posted some memories in our class notes (NMHclassof77) on Facebook.  Several of my classmates suggested that I also share them here.  Please excuse that the remarks are contextual in that they reflect the Arthur I knew at NMH.  Again, my sincere and deepest condolences for your loss.  Graydon Forrer, NMH 77, Wilson Hall 74-77.

 From Facebook:

The news of Arthur Lee’s death was shocking and for all of the predictable reasons. He was our age, so he was young. He was one of us, having shared the intense experience of a school like NMH where young people from often wildly divergent backgrounds are thrown together. And, having not seen him in many years, he remains the young man I knew in my teens and twenties and no one that young, certainly, can be gone.

Art (he will always be Art to me, as “Clayton” was a persona he would don when he fiddled around with country music) had been a very good friend at NMH and for some time thereafter. As too often happens, somewhere, some when we fell out of touch and he became that school friend you wondered about but never really knew where he was or what he was up to.

When I read Jon’s news at the breakfast table this morning I quickly found an old photo album to show my wife who Art was. The picture was easy to find among the photos I’ve kept from NMH. There we were, Art, Charlie McDermott, David Irwin and me in graduation robes and big grins on the Northfield Campus (I will try and copy and post the picture if I can figure it out). Shockingly young – and disturbing because, obviously, I’m the only one of the four who retained their natural good looks (  ;)  ). 

Art, Charlie, Dave and I were Student Leaders together for Dick and Louise Schwingel in Wilson Hall that year. All of us, I think, had quite different in personality, outlook and perspectives, brought together by circumstance and mutual respect that grew into real affection.

Art, for me, was one of the people who helped to make my NMH experience so powerful. He was one of the many attending NMH who had real and wide-world experience. His tales of growing up and living in Taiwan and Hong Kong were exotic and riveting – especially to un-travelled Midwesterner like myself. He knew so much more about the world and history and culture and music and art than I thought I could ever hope to equal. I was jealous and fascinated and eager to hear more.

He was also a great musician with -- as young people of a few years ago would call – seemingly “mad skills.” We’d spend hours together in the Wilson smoker or out on the smoking porch talking trash, Art fingering his guitar with a cigarette hanging out of one corner of his mouth. He was, in short, worldly and “cool” and in that way that can only happen when you’re 17 or 18, he made me feel much more confident about everything because I had a “cool” friend like Art. 

And it wasn’t just music, he was well read, smart, funny with a quick (and I recall cutting) wit. He had a sly, fun smile. He had the ability to be in the moment and to be outside the moment as well – looking in analyzing, assessing and amused.

I recall he was a very good student but not isolated or boxed-in by his talents. His music, his worldliness, his intelligence, his cigarettes and humor enabled him to connect with every strata of Wilson Hall and I assume across the school. He was fun and a leader and beyond liking him enormously, I recall both admiring him and being more than a little intimidated. 

After graduation, we saw each other occasionally. I recall some particularly drunken nights in Boston while he was at MIT as well as other brief and briefer occasions. 

The last time I saw him, in Washington, D.C., sometime in the early 90s. We spent the evening drinking and remembering and then he left and I never really saw or heard from him again. My fault, his fault, however it happened, suddenly there were years between us and I no longer knew him or where he was. That happens sometimes and that’s sad too.

But Art is and always will be a happy presence in my best memories of NMH and all of the things I liked most about it. His grin, his shaggy hair falling into his in his eyes, his mustache (we were all trying to grow one in those days -- some more successfully than others), his focus and intelligence combined with the promise of fun and, mostly, his sly, knowing humor.

  I have known Clayton since 2005, and wanted to share a few thoughts/experiences I've had with Clayton over the years....  

-  We first met at Oscar's when he was playing guitar there regularly.  We had both arrived to Shanghai at about the same time, and he wanted to meet & greet everyone there that was listening to him jam. I was 22 at the time, here to open an Asian operation for a company, and we ended up having a long term business cooperation thru his consulting business (PacLink).  We got this all established at the bar that night!  

- We became very good friends thru the years, often meeting for lunches & beers to discuss our evolving businesses, and mutual love/hate relationship with China/Asia, music, guitar, politics, homes in the US, and everything in between.  

-  One of his favorite things to do was to get a big group of people together for all-you-can-eat/drink Teppanyaki/Sushi/Sashima, and get our money's worth!  We would do this 2-3 times  year, and each time it was a great night out that often ended in drinking more beer at a live music spot.  He and I were the same - no fillers - go for the lamb chops and plates & plates of sashimi!  

-  We loved to talk about what's right & wrong with the world, politics, and he always had new conspiracies.  This was his passion: he loved discussing ideas, challenging the conventional, and making people question things.   

-  My family and I split our time between Boston & Shanghai.  We have celebrated many holidays over the years in Shanghai, and Clayton was always there - Christmas, Thanksgiving, 4th of July, etc.  I know he was the black sheep of the family (he often joked about it), but he had a huge adopted family in Shanghai that loved him & always enjoyed spending time with him.  

-  I know he wasn't exactly the ideal adult/mature/wisest/fatherly figure around, but at certain times thru the years, I had turned to him for guidance/advice on important personal issues.  He was always there to listen when I needed it, and able to offer a simple & comforting hand.  

-  He just absolutely loved where & what he was doing.  He loved talking about plans to move here & there, but in his heart Shanghai was his chosen home.  He loved it here, and loved to hate it here.  He loved being an expat.  He wouldn't have it any other way. He did love the US as well - definitely the land, the people, the culture - just not crazy about government.  

-  I know he preferred to live to the fullest & die young, than to the opposite.  This was far too young though.  He had much more to offer the world & his family/friends.    

Clayton was a great friend & will be missed.  He did what he loved, and was a real friend that had a positive impact on a lot of people.  

Look out heaven - you're about to get some better music & your conventions challenged! 

Clayton was an uncle, a brother, a mentor, a friend and provocateur to me over the years, sometimes all at once. In a way, when I look back at my formative years, it's almost difficult for me to define the boundary between his influence on me and my own individual interests and proclivities. While I saw him many times while I was very young at family gatherings, I guess it was about age 13 when Clayton really put the hooks in me on an individual, personal level—music and the guitar, the intellectual curiosity, the eagerness to explore and debate the taboo, unconventional or contrarian, and the idea that having a good time was not just a diversion from reality, but rather an important way to develop connections and get to core human truths.

In adolescence, one of the things that young people strive for is to have our ideas, interests and pursuits taken seriously by adults. And one of the first mature impressions I had of Clayton is that he was listening to what I was saying, asking probing questions, taking interest and thinking about what I was saying (or, at least, feigning as much in a convincing way). He made me feel like I was worth listening to, that I might have a unique perspective worthy of consideration. When I first picked up the guitar (partly due to his influence, of course), he took every opportunity to get me to play with him. I was terrible in those early years, of course, but even so he had me sit in with him and his bandmates, made recordings of us playing together, encouraged me to try different things, and gave me approving nods if I so much as played a blues riff in the right key.

The same went if we talked about politics or science or even purely abstract ideas or the paranormal (the 'woo-woo' stuff, as we liked to call it)--he nurtured my belief in myself (as a musician, thinker, debater and explorer) just by being willing to listen and respond, not as one does to a 'kid,' but rather as if I were his peer. By doing this for and with me, he helped me raise the bar on what I believed I was capable of as a young adult. That this incredibly smart and interesting guy—never mind that he was my relative—actually valued what I said and did was an incredible confidence booster. Every time I would see Clayton in my teen years, I would want to be as prepared as possible to talk about anything and everything, and would practice up on the guitar so that I could impress him and make a real musical contribution when we got down to “pickin' and grinnin'” at family gatherings.

As I got older, and finally came close to actually being his peer, he never, ever 'pulled rank' on me, though he easily could (and maybe should) have. Certainly, we got in more than our fair share of knock-down, drag-out arguments about everything and nothing, embarrassed ourselves (privately and publicly) on more than a few occasions, but the next morning, we would both always own up to the fact that we were both being pig-headed and that what mattered most was that we understood and loved each other, and agreed on the most important, fundamental issues about life.

I remember one time in Boston in 2003 or 2004, shortly after my grandfather/his father, Frank, had passed away, Clayton was staying with me for a few nights while I was in grad school. We got into the martinis a bit early, and went on to some parties where we got even looser, and eventually got into a heated political or philosophical debate that ended up drowning out whatever social situation we were in . . . We eventually staggered home arguing in the street, I think I was even crying or both of us were, and we suddenly thought—what would poppa (my grandfather/his father) think about how we were carrying on? We stopped right there, hugged in the middle of the street, and resolved our differences in a few important statements, and then went home and passed out happy. We both realized that these kinds of arguments were really a way for us to debate the contradictions and questions in ourselves. There was never a real Answer—but the debates, however uncivil they may have gotten at times, helped us realize that there are differences and contradictions in the human spirit that can never be resolved, that aren't meant to be resolved. Not sure I would have realized that without Clayton.

Clayton used music to bring people together as well as anyone I've ever known. In my adult years, we would visit each other in different places and always found ways to play gigs together. When I visited him in North Carolina or Shanghai, I would sit in with his rock band or share a set at an open mic. Or when he visited me in Ukraine or Turkmenistan, we played sets in various bars with my bands. It was such a great way to get together, be a unit, and introduce each other to new people and our respective 'scenes.' Clayton would always fit in, could strike up conversation with anyone. I learned a ton from him about how to slide into any social context (and also slide out!). And, of course, at family gatherings, we both loved playing for the family group, learning Christmas tunes or sing-alongs, and also staying up late by ourselves in the basement or on the porch to pick through some new stuff and gab away over drinks. When my wife and I visited Clayton in Shanghai in 2007, I saw exactly what I had seen wherever Clayton went—he had helped establish an eclectic musical community of unique and cool people, and was a fixture on the scene. I've always tried to emulate (mostly unsuccessfully) the way he acted as a magnet and glue for music scenes wherever he went, and found connections with all sorts of folks from all sorts of backgrounds through music. And, as many have mentioned, and as he did for me as a kid, he would always be the first to encourage a shy, new person on the scene to step up and join in.

He loved to gig, and loved to chat with other musicians, but let's not forget that he was also just a damn good guitar (or 'guitfiddle,' as he liked to call it) player. I learned so much from him about music and the guitar. It was not that his technical facility on the instrument was amazing (though it was, indeed, excellent), but rather that he could play almost anything in any setting. And his playing was always tasty. Other cats could play faster or more flashy, but his phrasing was always spot on, and in the right spirit for the tune. I always admired that. Rock, jazz, finger-style, bluegrass, country, any flavor of folk—you name it, and he could play it, or at least fake it and sound good. And he was such a good listener (which is what enabled to play in so many settings). If he and I were just jamming on something in the backyard and I played something strange or non-standard that he liked or was perplexed by, he would stop me and say, “Hey, man, what was that you were just playing there?” And he would learn it immediately and store it away in his toolbox (in the process giving me a moment of pride to relish).

When we began planning our US wedding, there was no question that Clayton had to be my best man. Not only was he one of the most important figures in my life, but he had also been so accepting and supportive of my wife, Tavus, and our multi-cultural, international life. He strove to understand us as a couple, my connection to Turkmenistan and the former Soviet Union and my general career and life path . . . While I don't remember exactly what he said during his toast at the reception, I remember both laughing my ass off (there is a good picture of that moment in the photo gallery on this site), and also getting misty-eyed. In however many words, he said that I had become for him, many of the things that he was for me—a brother, a confidante, a 'supportive challenger,' and valued friend. Hearing those sentiments from him at that moment in my life was a very special gift that I will never forget. It meant, to me, that I had maybe achieved the promise that he helped me establish back when I was 13 year-old kid and just wanted to be cool enough for him to want to hang out with . . .

While in more recent years, for various reasons, our philosophical approaches and beliefs diverged a bit more than they had previously, Clayton never dismissed me for not being 'on board' with all of his interests. In a way, I think, our somewhat irreconcilable beliefs kind of freed us from having to maintain our relationship based on external factors. Increasingly, we talked mainly of general life issues, family, travel and, of course, music. We cared about and understood each other as people, and would always talk about the next time we would meet up. We had tentatively been planning a visit to see my family and me in Moldova this summer, and I was trying to think of gigs we might get in town when he came . . .

I think Clayton's passing will hit me in stages, over time. Maybe a long time. Now just emerging from the initial shock and mourning stage, I realize that I have lost a true and valued ally in this world. With Clayton in my life, however distant we might be from one another physically, I always knew that there was a guy out there who understood me and would back me up no matter what went down, and not judge me. If I did something supremely stupid, failed miserably or made a total idiot of myself, I could always share it with Clayton and get caring, knowing commiseration in return. And I tried to do the same for him. When I come upon some wacky fact or crazy idea, I will have to check my reflex to email it to him and wait for his thoughts. At family gatherings, from now on, there will be a huge hole, for me and everyone. I will miss his quirks and foibles as much as much as his beautiful laugh and smile, the heated disagreements as much as the wonderful musical sympathy. Clayton was a genuine and rare human being, with a unique intellect and musical spirit, and I will miss him for the rest of my life . . .

I will always remember Clayton's smile. It was geniune and it was real. I loved his laugh...it was like no other. He liked to talk about anything but more importantly, he listened.