November 21, 2024

Leaders and Legacies: Lee Freese

As part of our 130th anniversary celebration, the Leaders and Legacies series recognizes past leaders whose vision continues to drive us forward.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published May 1, 2019. Lee Freese died March 15, 2022, at age 86. Lee, a pioneering water supply pipeline/pump station engineer, left behind a legacy of technical excellence and mentorship. We honor his memory each year with the Lee B. Freese Excellence in Mentoring Award.

 

We all need mentors — mine was Lee Freese. Lee’s mentor was his dad, Simon Freese. Lee’s account was that Simon made a point of not involving himself in Lee’s work, but Lee also pointed out that it was Simon’s idea for Lee to spend five years in the project construction phase to learn how things got built.

Lee said Simon created conditions for his growth. “Sometimes painful. Made me aware there’s a better way than ‘sink or swim.’ ” He reflected that his dad probably was “not aware at the time that I was learning from him, but I was.”

​One of Lee’s earliest, most significant projects was the O.H. Ivie Dam project. During the project, Lee lived nearby, in Colorado City and Big Spring. He has reflected that as a young engineer he learned about the relationship between the designer and the contractor. With characteristic humor, he stated that learning about this relationship was one of the lessons his father thought was central. “That’s why he put me out in the field for five years,” Lee said.

When he recounted it at the end of his career, Lee said his own mentoring of other employees was “my way of dealing with people who worked for me,” giving people additional responsibility as they showed abilities. I was fortunate that Lee saw those abilities in me.

A Good Job is Your Best Marketing

Years later, when I started working on projects for North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD) north of Dallas, I understood Lee’s advice that if you do a good job for a client the client will give you more work. He said that doing a good job for a client was our best marketing tool. NTMWD is still an important client of ours today.

Another great attribute of Lee’s was that he had a knack for assigning new project challenges and sensing when I could step up and meet the challenge, and when he needed to step in. Lots of people in this company have been mentored and helped by Lee. One fan was longtime construction manager Ted Gay, who said Lee was instrumental in developing water resources for Texas and that we “should all thank him.”

Ted credits Lee with always understanding the tension between design and construction. He described Lee’s approach to project difficulties as “We had a little problem …  worked our way through it … got it fixed … moved on down the road.”