I only knew Lee a short while, and never met Ana or their children, but I’d like to pass on one story to them from the time Lee visited me in China in 1999. He arrived in Beijing, and we traveled as far south as Fuzhou where I was a teacher, and west to places like Turpan, Urumqi, and Kashgar. It was in Kashgar one afternoon that a young Uighur man invited us to his home to meet his family. His mother and sister taught me how to pull noodles for lunch, and when we were all finally seated in their colorful, pillow-strewn home with our chopsticks and bowls of (delicious!) noodle soup, Lee and I quickly realized that we were expected to slurp the noodles, noisily, to show our hostess how good the meal was. And I believe that's what we did, giving it our best shot! It was a long time ago, the details escape me, but it remains one of the happier, funnier memories of that trip. Lee was a good friend to me at a time when I needed it the most.

Heather