Lee York, VHS 1969 There’s Always A Way To Improve Your Life

by Linda Baker, VHS 1969

“I think others saw me as serious and aloof at Vic High,” says Lee. “I was always into the books more than my friends were.” So he was surprised when I recently shared my high school impression of him as a positive, outgoing guy, a version of him that definitely came to embody his life.

Lee came to our Class of 1969 50^th reunion in  May 2019, and this past August I caught up with him at his Sidney townhouse, sharing stories, reminiscing, and enjoying some laughs. The first thing that struck me about him was that he was the same Lee I remembered, that guy with the positive attitude and engaging spirit. There’s a light in him that not even his journey back from his 2019 diagnosis of pneumococcal septicemia could extinguish.

Both Lee’s hands and both his feet have been amputated, the result of the bacteria picked up on one of his trips abroad that morphed into gangrene and the slow death of cells in his extremities. When diagnosed on his return that year from Egypt and Lebanon, he was given a 5 -10% chance of surviving. Today he’s as funny and positive as ever, and friends and family say they’ve never heard him complain about anything.

So, is Lee York a saint? Nope. He just gets on with what he can do, not what he can’t. But more about that life-changing turn of events later.

“I didn’t participate in much at Vic High,” says Lee. “I had an after-school job at Island Business Machines. I was the ‘ribbon guy’.”  Whenever somebody ordered new typewriter ribbons, Lee would deliver them on his bike and install them for the customer. He lived on Graham Street, attended S. J. Willis Junior High, and later walked to Vic High every morning with his friends Peter George, Diane Tighe (they’re still married – to each other), and Loanne Lindstrom.

Lee was in the Gamma Hi-Y Club at Vic High. “We were kind of the alter ego to the Beta Boys,” says Lee. “We talked about art and local history, but we had loads of school spirit, too.” Lee also joined the track team, participating in discus and shotput. “My Mt. Doug girlfriend was a sprinter, so if I wanted to see more of her, I figured that might help.”

But Student Parliament was where Lee says he learned the most. (We both thought it was Mr. Nesmith who was the teacher sponsor. Does anyone remember if that’s true?) “I do remember (Vice-Principal) Reg Reid coming to one of our meetings,” he says, “held – literally  – in an old closet on the Boys’ side of the second floor. He told the 4 or 5 of us there that ‘10% of the school population was experimenting with marijuana’. We laughed after he left – we figured it was probably more than 10%! But Mr. Reid was a great Vice-Principal.”

Maybe because of his Vic High leadership experiences, Lee minored in Political Science at UVic (he majored in Economics), and now takes a great interest in local politics and entertained running as a Councillor. “There’s some accessibility catch-up issues,” he explains. “My lack of hands means I’m slower at computer skills, calling up documents. So I’m concerned I’d slow things down.” That hasn’t stopped him, though, from sitting on the Saanich Peninsula Accessibility Advisory Committee and volunteering as treasurer of his strata council. “Yes, I can still rock a spreadsheet!” he laughs. “Maybe as voice recognition improves, that will help folks like me participate more in politics.” Lee also volunteers as a peer counsellor for new amputees.

After two years at UVic, Lee went back to retail work for five years, then returned to UVic to eventually complete his Economics degree. He then took courses in accounting and purchasing management, and got a job with School District 61 as a buyer. That led to a stint at the City of Victoria as a buyer, and then in 1987 he was hired as a manager at Cowichan Hospital. “They wanted to computerize, and I kind of suggested I knew a fair bit about computers” he laughs. But in true Lee York can-do fashion, he learned, spent hours and hours prepping data for input, and led the computerization of hospital operations.

Note:  Lee’s yearbook write-up included his Ambition as ‘to excel in some branch in the field of computers’. Looks like he got his wish!

From there he rose through a series of government managerial positions: Director of Materials for Central Vancouver Island health operations, Manager of Capital Acquisitions and Asset Disposal at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria when the government set up health regions. Then in 2010 his boss Bill Speed, (also VHS 1969), retired. Government was provincializing the supply chain under the Provincial Health Services Authority, and Lee became the Director, Supply Chain Operations, Vancouver Island, for PHSA. Two years later he retired, hit the golf course, and  did more travelling with wife Ginny.

“I love how you have these connections with classmates,” says Ginny, as we all chatted and laughed. “I grew up in Ontario and have no connections with kids I knew in school.” Both Ginny and Lee had been married before meeting at Cowichan Hospital. Ginny was Pediatrics Head Nurse at the time, later taking on numerous challenges as a manager in the health care field. One of her recent jobs was merging Central Care and Mt. Edwards Court in Victoria , and moving patients into what is now The Heights at Mt. View.

“I think I fell in love with Lee at a planning meeting at the (Cowichan) hospital,” says Ginny. “We were discussing planning for a potential pandemic. Swine flu? I’m not sure what it was. Everybody was back and forth about things, and there was Lee: very wise, very logical, and very funny.” Their years together have included family time with his two sons – ages 40 and 46 – and her daughter, and Lee’s 6 grandkids. His granddaughter, an RCMP officer, is expecting Lee and Ginny’s first great-grandchild next spring.

Lee’s logical mind, penchant for stats, and love of creating order and efficiency and making things work better may have provided the framework for his career. But technology was – and is still! – evolving, and as purchasing manager he had to understand how things worked in order to ensure good decisions were made, contracts were accurate, and he could co-develop purchasing specs with technical staff. “You don’t learn how complex x-ray imaging equipment works in an Economics course,” he says. Needless to say, that didn’t stop him. He just got to it and learned what he needed to know. Little did he realize at the time, that these expensive, complex imaging machines would be a legacy that would facilitate his healing from a deadly bacteria.

“Looking back on my career at VIHA,” says Lee, “I’m proud of the way that my team and I were able to embrace organizational and technological change to provide lasting efficiencies and have a bit of fun doing it”.

But back to that pesky bacterial pneumonia.

September 18 he and Ginny returned from their Egypt/Lebanon trip. Lee hadn’t been feeling well for a few days and Ginny was checking up on him. “Any other symptoms?” she asked. “Well my hands are numb,” replied Lee. Ginny’s medical knowledge and experience and kicked in, so off they went to Saanich Peninsula Hospital. “I walked in on my own,” says Lee, “and they couldn’t get a blood pressure reading from me. The next thing I knew I was coming out of a three-week coma and had lost both my hands.”

“It was a very scary time,” says Ginny. “They told me he was extremely ill, had a 5 – 10% chance of survival, and if he did survive he’d likely lose a hand, a foot.” In addition to her work as a nurse, Ginny had looked after her mother when MS evolved quickly into quadriplegia, and her father as his dementia advanced.

In addition to both hands being amputated while in a coma, Lee had a heart attack and was on dialysis for seven weeks as his organs began shutting down. His left leg was amputated, and part of his right foot. “They had me on antibiotics for a year, hoping we could save the right foot,” he says quite matter-of-factly. But it wasn’t to be and in 2021 his right foot was amputated. He also had to have a skin graft to replace his upper lip, where body cells had begun to die off as well.  “I called all those surgeries my ‘lip and tuck’,” he jokes. Six months after walking into the hospital, he left using a walker. Everybody was amazed. He returned periodically over the next three months for antibiotic therapy and amputation of his second foot. Six weeks into his stay at GF Strong Rehabilitation Center in Vancouver, COVID landed so he came home and continued his rehab there. “I’m grateful for the experience there,” he says. “It really helped me adapt to the challenges of disabilities.”  He still goes twice a week to an adaptive gym in Victoria, walks to the ocean every day, and regularly visits Sidney’s Wellness Park to use the fitness equipment.

Ginny is key to Lee’s quality of life. So when she was away visiting family in the east, he entered a contest run by Wheel the World, an invaluable web-based resource that makes travel accessible. When the phone call came, he was sure the news he’d won the contest was a scam so got a phone number to call back. It was real. He and Ginny had planned a safari in Africa for 2020, but had to cancel to accommodate Lee’s healing and rehabilitation. The Wheel the World prize was four nights at a five-star lodge in Africa, so Lee was sure it was meant to be. “Lee isn’t actually an animal-lover,” laughs Ginny.  But Lee was thrilled he could make this bucket list trip happen for Ginny.

Wheel the World created a documentary about Lee and Ginny and their stay at the Ximiwu Lodge in South Africa, located within the Klaserie Private Nature Reserve. Survival to Safari: The Inspiring Story of Adventure After Limb Loss. https://youtu.be/80kYvE6BXpA  The Lodge specializes in accessible travel, and enables all their guests to experience Africa’s Big Five (lion, elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo, leopard)  in specially adapted vehicles with knowledgeable guides that travel right out into the bush. You’ll also see in the video, one of the regular parades of a herd of elephants, just yards from Lee and Ginny’s room.

Lee and Ginny’s story is their everyday reality. To the rest of us it’s inspiring, a reminder that what really matters in life is focussing on what’s possible, on acceptance, love and friendship, and like Lee, remembering…There’s always something you can do to improve your life. 

Thanks, Lee and Ginny!