Roger Hung Tuan Yee – 50th Reunion Essay

Roger Hung Tuan Yee

222 Burns Street

Forest Hills, NY 11375

rhtyee@gmail.com

718-544-0939

Spouse(s): Carol Yee (1975)

Child(ren): Philip (1980), Eleanor (1986)

Education: Yale College, BA (1969), Yale School of Architecture, M.Arch (1972)

Career: Architect/draftsman, Philip Johnson & John Burgee; Editor, Architectural Record, House Beautiful, Contract; Marketing Advisor, Cushman & Wakefield; Editor, Visual Profile Books

Avocations: Fine arts, performing arts, literature, science, community affairs

College: Ezra Stiles

I’ll Always Have Elm City

I will always cherish the countless hours I shared at Yale with gifted teachers and ambitious students enjoying our magnificent campus, exploring New Haven, and traveling out of town as a member of the Class of 1969. The education I received was priceless, and it came with fond memories. I won’t forget a lively walk across the New Haven Green with Chaplain William Sloan Coffin, who cheerfully described how he responded to the concern of his future father-in-law, pianist Arthur Rubenstein, about admitting a “Billy Graham” to the family by expressing his own concern about admitting a “Liberace” to his. I vividly remember the sunny spring day when busloads of us coat-and-tie Yalies descended on Washington, DC, for appointments with our elected officials to discuss the Vietnam War. And I can still recite the closing message I delivered in my job as the “Bursary Boy” who turned off the lights of the Periodical Reading Room at Sterling Memorial Library at the end of many a long evening.

Not surprisingly, Yale played a role in my choice of career. I was one of hundreds of students who attended art historian Vincent Scully’s lectures on architecture and found the man-made environment transformed by the power of his ideas. After completing the M.Arch program at Yale School of Architecture, I began a varied and satisfying career that spanned architecture, real estate, and publishing. At the risk of boring my classmates, I can happily look back on such highlights as being a member of Philip Johnson’s design team for Avery Fisher Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, producing an award-winning issue of a magazine on corporate design and real estate that introduced Americans to the architecture and office culture of corporate Japan, and editing a handsomely illustrated book that revealed the surprisingly important role of the State of Michigan in the birth of modern design in America.

Along with an interesting career, I have been fortunate to have a happy family life with a wonderful wife (Carol and I met at Yale as graduate students), son, and daughter. Our children are on their own now, while Carol and I deal with the opportunities and challenges of leisure time (Carol has retired; I edit books and want to take up painting), aging (thank heavens for Medicare!), and life in New York City (we are both active in community affairs, and I serve as an Alumni Fund class agent for Yale School of Architecture). I’d like to take the occasion of the 50th Reunion of the Class of 1969 to wish my classmates much happiness, health, and prosperity. And my sincere thank you to the good people of Yale University and New Haven, for all you have done to make the years at Yale and thereafter so rewarding for me. Wherever life takes me, I’ll always have Elm City and its luminous Yale University.