Musical memorial for John Lee - eye surgeon of ‘towering intellect’ - Remembering Moorfields Eye Hospital's squint pioneer
Published: 03 February 2011
by JAMIE WELHAM
CLOSE to 1,000 people paid tribute to the late leading eye surgeon and president of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists John Lee at a memorial service in east London.
Mr Lee, who died suddenly aged 63 in October last year, worked at Moorfields Eye Hospital for 25 years where he pioneered treatments in squint surgery.
The service was held at St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch on Saturday and featured eulogies from family members and colleagues who paid tribute to Mr Lee’s “sense of carpe diem” and “towering intellect”.
As well as music by Bach and Handel, there was a playful rendition of Jackson Browne’s hit, Doctor My Eyes.
Mr Lee, the son of Irish teacher parents and the oldest of 11 siblings, studied medicine at Oxford before going on to become the world’s leading authority on strabismus (misalignment of the eyes).
He trained surgeons in Europe and America and regularly travelled to India and Bangladesh to work for the charity Project Orbis. He was elected president of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in Regent’s Park in 2009 – the first to be elected by a vote of the entire membership.
Mr Lee’s younger sister Anna led the tributes, recalling his long-suffering childhood growing up with seven sisters. The feminine influence grew stronger, when upon marrying his university girlfriend Arabella, Mr Lee acquired a further five sisters-in-law, she said.
His son Ben continued the theme by recounting family holidays in Connemara and his father’s love for crosswords and board games, especially Risk, for which he enjoyed the prospect of “world domination”. A great capacity to store general knowledge made Mr Lee a formidable Trivial Pursuit opponent, and won him a place on University Challenge.
Colleagues Bruce Noble, an ophthalmic surgeon from Leeds, and Gill Adams from Moorfields recalled Mr Lee’s electrifying influence on colleagues and his “mischievous sense of humour” and “Beatles hairstyle” in a hospital known for its 1950s attitudes to dress.
He recounted Mr Lee’s “relaxed attitude to health and safety” in a now infamous episode where he smuggled the paralysing poison botulin through customs from America to keep in his fridge. International colleague Dr John Flynn, from America, reminded guests of Mr Lee’s contribution to science, having published more than 130 journal papers and training 40 post-graduate fellows.
The service finished with the Irish folksong, Parting Glass and a show of pictures from his life in the church.