Connecting cultures, building business

Rough Notes, Aug 2002 by Boone, Elisabeth

A fixture in New York's Chinatown, the Lee Agency helps Asian business owners move into the economic mainstream

When she saw a huge orange mushroom-- shaped cloud envelop the south World Trade Center tower last September 11, Sandra Lee's first thought was that the skyscraper had been struck by an atomic bomb. Lee, who was on her way to a meeting at an insurer's office nearby, witnessed the horrific scene first-hand and discovered from snatches of overheard conversations that it was not an accident.

Lee's business partner and cousin, Stephen Boon, Jr., was on Wall Street when the planes exploded into the Twin Towers. Rushing back to the agency's office in Chinatown, Boon passed the South Street Seaport, which gave him an unobstructed view of the unearthly scene. He describes the image that remains indelibly impressed on his memory: "To me, the towers looked like two candles in the sky," he says, "two long sticks with flames at the top."

When they arrived at their agency's office on Pell Street, less than a mile from the financial district, they found panic-stricken residents surging through the streets, thoroughfares being closed to traffic by the National Guard, telecommunications networks collapsing-and, overlying all, a sense of almost apocalyptic doom.

Today, 10 months after the terrorist attacks, Chinatown is still recovering from the impact of lost revenue, not to mention the deaths and injuries of relatives, friends, and neighbors who worked in or near the Twin Towers. Helping residents deal with the fallout has been a priority of Harold L. Lee & Sons, Inc., now in its fourth generation of family ownership under the leadership of Sandra K. Lee, chairman, and Stephen Boon, president.

Right after the attacks, Lee says, Chinatown offered a refuge of sorts from the devastation of Wall Street. "A lot of our underwriters came through our office to get water or make phone calls. Then we lost our phone service, and by 1:00 we realized we had to close down."

The agency's phone service was down for a month, and because of National Guard restrictions on truck traffic it couldn't move its server to another location. Although its office was temporarily out of operation, the agency continued to do business. "We got cell phones for our staff members and sent out letters with the cell numbers to our thousands of clients," Lee says, "and we called as many of our clients as possible to see if there was any way to help them. We let them know we were still working for them and that they could reach us if they needed to."

Fortunately, most of the Lee Agency's clients sustained no physical damage, but they did suffer economic damage as the result of business interruption. Because truck traffic was prohibited on a major artery, Canal Street, many Chinatown businesses were cut off from both their suppliers and their customers. "Noodle manufacturers couldn't get flour deliveries, and trucks couldn't come in to pick up the noodles once they were made," Lee explains. "The restaurants couldn't use their phones for reservations or credit card transactions. A lot of our clients' businesses were affected, and once we were up and running, we helped process a lot of business interruption claims."

The hardening market only exacerbated the pain. "It was tough to give clients the bad news that their rates would be increasing at the same time we were helping them file claims," Lee says. "It was a tough time for everybody, but we all got through it, and we're very thankful."

From China to Chinatown

That strong sense of community and commitment has characterized the Lee Agency since the founding of its predecessor company in 1888. That year, Lee Kee Do (Sandra's great-- grandfather) and his two brothers, young merchants from Kwangchow and Toishan provinces, settled in New York's Chinatown. Together they founded the Tai Lung (Great Prosperity) Company with offices at 31 Pell Street, the current location of the Lee Agency. In the early 1900s, the Lee family ran a number of businesses at the Pell Street location, including a grocery and curio shop.

Harold Lun Lee, the son of Lee Kee Do, joined the family business as a young adult. He started the Chinese Film Exchange, one of the earliest distributors of motion pictures and operator of one of the area's first Chinese language movie theatres. He also ran a noodle company. Harold was one of the first Chinese ever to work in an American bank. Using the knowledge and experience he gained there, he established a foreign exchange service that allowed new immigrants to send money back to China and to exchange Chinese currency for American. Tai Lung became Chinatown's first American Express agent.

Next to enter the family enterprise were Harold's sons, Andrew and Henry Lee. In the 1940s, they started

businesses in insurance and travel-- the first of their kind in Chinatown. Today a fourth generation of Lees, Andrew's daughter Sandra K. Lee and nephew Stephen Boon, Jr., are running the family businesses and establishing a new direction for the future.