Guy Lease

Personal Biography

If I was to define my life in one word it would have to be “fortunate.” Toward the end of our high school time together, I played in a remarkable basketball game that Jones won against Spring Branch H.S. Coach Bunky Bradford designed this incredible offensive strategy that had us all laughing, but amazingly it worked. It also gave me the opportunity to score 30 points in the game and led the Spring Branch coach to recommend me to the coach at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi for a scholarship. I was lucky enough to go there for two incredible years and then transfer to Rice University where I played basketball for two more years and stayed a fifth year as a student coach. For one lucky game, I got to go to college for five years on scholarship and get a superb education.

I would not have thought the Viet Nam War would bring me luck, but right after graduation Uncle Sam came calling and kept me out of law school. Once again with good fortune, I landed in Georgia and spent my entire military service in Augusta. I even got to go to the Master’s Golf Tournament twice just by wearing my uniform. After I got out, I had an opportunity to work overseas for the government in Wiesbaden, West Germany. I went for six months and stayed for 7 years. This trip may have been one of my luckiest moments. I married an American school teacher there and we had our first child before we returned to the US in 1976. Now we have been married 29 years and find ourselves enjoying our “empty nest.” Before we left Germany, we had the opportunity to travel throughout northern and central Europe. My interests moved from basketball to skiing and we found ourselves at one time or another on virtually every major European ski resort in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. We honeymooned in Val d’Isere and Chamonix. We skied the Olympic runs above Innsbruck two weeks before the 1976 Olympics. Little did we realize that our travels through the Alps would eventually carry us to the mountains of California.

I finished an MBA in Germany through the U. of Utah and entered a doctoral program at the University of Southern California in Educational Administration upon our return to the United States. Now 25 years later I am President of Lake Tahoe Community College, living in one of the most beautiful mountain resorts in the world. I have a beautiful wife, two great kids and, so far, two delightful grandsons. Now I am teaching my older grandson to ski and play golf. My interests have migrated a bit from so many days on the mountain, to quite a few on the golf course. My love of athletics and the outdoors has barely diminished. There is a great joy in being active, but a far greater pleasure is derived from watching your grandson play and learn to love something you can do together.

My daughter graduated last June with her doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of California, San Francisco. She is married with two sons, one 6 and one just a year old. My son graduated from Emerson College in Boston and is now enrolled in a Master’s program at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. How lucky can a father be?

While I am enjoying my todays, I find myself constantly looking into the future. I wonder about my children and their children and how they will all turn out. I see how hard they work and the potential they possess. I can only hope they will find happiness and much of the good fortune I have found. I am excited for them and I find myself increasingly more impatient for the future to come.