June 21, 2006 – Longtime St. Thomas resident Norita Lee died Monday at age 69. She had battled lung cancer for a year and was at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when she died.
There are no immediate plans for a memorial service.
"That's the way she wanted it," her husband of 36 years, Bruce M. Lee, said Wednesday. "No fuss."
Before moving to St. Thomas 17 years ago from her native Boston, she served as a news anchor at WNNN-TV in Boston. She also owned the Boston-based Norita Lee Communications.
In an interview published on www.workinpr.com, Lee said that she and her husband first visited the Virgin Islands on cruises. She said that one year they decided to stay an extra week.
"We were hooked! We bought a condo and soon the vacation time got longer and longer. Then came the day we didn't want to leave and go back to the fast track," she wrote.
She made her mark in the St. Thomas advertising world.
"She was smart enough to create a new logo for the Ad Club and publicized it at every event," former Advertising Club of the Virgin Islands President Brian Squires said Wednesday.
He said that Lee threw herself into everything she did. "She was a totally committed person," he said.
Terri Brown, another advertising colleague, said that Lee served twice as the club's president. She said Lee was awarded the American Advertising Federation's Silver Medal, given for service to the community.
"She was the consummate professional – one of the only people to depend on to know exactly what to do," Brown said.
Advertising colleague Bob Austin said that Lee held the club together when it was in serious danger of disintegrating.
"If you handed her the ball, she got to the goal post," he said. He said that Lee was persuasive in convincing people to do what she asked them to do.
Another advertising colleague, Dottie Sparks, said that Lee had a mind for detail, so much so that she "went right along behind you" when working on jobs. "She always wanted everything to be perfect … " Sparks said.
P.J. Hanscom, a St. Thomas resident, remembered that once Lee met someone, she always remembered who they were the next time they met.
St. Thomas resident Charlene Kehoe called Lee a force to be reckoned with and echoed other comments that Lee was committed to the community.
Lee also taught job skills to women at the New Image Foundation on St. Thomas.
She also worked in the St. Thomas media circle, served as a news anchor at the Breeze-FM on St. Thomas and contributed, at various times, to the Source, the V.I. Daily News, Island Trader, and the V.I. Business Journal, as well as major newspapers like the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.
Lee was a founder and a member of the board of the Twin Towers Orphans Fund, a national organization that provides educational funds for the children of those who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
As news of her death circulated around the territory, friends shared vignettes about Lee.
"Coming from Boston, she was a great Irish person who loved St. Patrick's Day," Squires said. He said Lee was a "great fan of Molly Molone's," an East End bar and restaurant.
In addition to her husband, Lee is survived by a stepdaughter, Deborah Lee of Concord, Mass., three step-grandchildren, and her sisters, Joan Snow of Boston and Jan Kelly of Provincetown, Mass.
