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For Immediate Release August 6th, 2001
GOVERNOR TAUESE PRAISES FORMER GOVERNOR H. REX LEE
Former Governor H(yrum) Rex Lee, American Samoa’s seventh appointed civil governor, passed away on July 26, 2001 in La Jolla, California. He was 91 years old.
Governor Tauese Sunia expressed his condolences to Governor Lee’s family, and praised Lee’s service to the people of the United States and American Samoa, saying that the late Governor was instrumental in bringing American Samoa into the modern age.
Lee spent over four decades in U.S.
government service among which was his appointment as governor of American Samoa
from 1961 to 1967. Lee was a native of Rigby, Idaho, and a graduate in
agricultural economics from the University of Idaho. In 1936, he entered
government service as an economist with the Department of Agriculture.
During World War II, he served with
the War Relocation Authority and was assigned to relocate Japanese-Americans.
Later Lee worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs before being appointed
Governor of American Samoa.
On May 24, 1961, President John F.
Kennedy appointed Lee as American Samoa's seventh appointed civil governor
(until July 31, 1967), succeeding Governor Peter Tali Coleman, who was the
Territory's only appointed Samoan governor. Lee's first term was the longest of
any of American Samoa's governors (civil or naval), and he served an additional
half-year term (May 28, 1977-January 3, 1978), thus becoming the longest-serving
appointed civil governor, and the only appointed civil governor to serve two
non-consecutive terms.
His administration saw the
establishment of a new airport, roads, schools, a luxury hotel in to cultivate
the tourist industry, two fish canneries, new harbor facilities, an impressive
educational television system, and numerous other innovations.
In 1966, when American Samoa had the
opportunity of reunifying with Western Samoa, its citizens chose to remain a
territory of the United States.
After his six-year tenure in American
Samoa, Lee received the Award for Distinguished Federal Civil Service and was
appointed to the Federal Communications Commission where he worked until his
retirement in 1973. He moved to California and became a founding chairman of the
Public Service Satellite Consortium and helped establish educational television
in several South American countries.