I AM WILSHIRE - MICHAEL LEE

Trading Places

The fall of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, devastated thousands of lives. In Michael Lee’s case, the change sparked that day was positive as well as dramatic.

On the day of the attack, he was working in New York City just a half-mile away from the World Trade Center, and he saw both planes hit the buildings.

“This tragedy has had the greatest effect of any event on my adult life,” he said. “My ‘Damascus moment’ occurred as I sat quietly on Sept. 17, 2001, still shell-shocked, during the weekly Investment Policy Committee meeting at my company.

“As the head money manager talked of our investment exposure to insurance companies and airline bonds, I said to myself: ‘What are you doing in this meeting? The worst attack on American soil took place only a few blocks away. Thousands of people are hurt or dead; many are crying, scared and lost. You were put on earth to help people.’

“I knew I was not born to forecast where interest rates were going in the next quarter,” Michael added. So he said to God: “I’m ready. I’m not sure what you want me to do, but put me on your team, Lord. Take me off the bench.”

The call to vocational ministry came the following winter, and he entered Union Theological Seminary while continuing to work full time. After graduating in May 2006 with a master of divinity degree, he decided to pursue a career in clinical pastoral education in the Southwest.

Michael was recruited by Baptist Health System of San Antonio and began a one-year residency program the following September. There he met Julie Merritt. When she came to Wilshire as a pastoral resident last fall, he followed as quickly as he could, and they were soon engaged. He works in the corporate dividends department of a financial clearing firm but is looking for a chaplaincy position.

Michael joined Wilshire last spring, and Julie baptized him. They will be married July 26 in Waco.

He was born and raised in New York City, the child of a Haitian immigrant mother and a first-generation American father of Irish descent. His parents were divorced when he was 4.

“The diverse cultures of my parents allow me not to grasp on to an identity blindly,” he said. “I can see that there’s richness in all.”

His mother, Solonge Lee, is also living in Dallas, and frequently attends Wilshire services and activities, including traveling with the Wilshire group to North Africa.

Michael was an outstanding runner in high school, specializing in cross-country and the two-mile run. He served as vice president of his class during his junior and senior years in high school.

He received his undergraduate degree from Binghamton University in New York State. He majored in finance, although he realized early on that this was “not the right fit for me.”

After graduating in 1994, he went straight to Wall Street, where he began as a cold-calling stockbroker for an investment firm. He continued to work in the industry until 2004, becoming an operational clerk and then a bond portfolio manager.

“Despite the monetary rewards, I found no passion whatsoever in this vocational endeavor,” he noted. “My original plan was to work on Wall Street for about 20 years and afterward work at a social service organization.”

He was raised Roman Catholic and comes from a long line of Catholic clergy, including priests, nuns and monks. However, Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, previously the pulpit of Norman Vincent Peale, “has served as the foundation for my spiritual life from the first day I entered its historic doors in December 1989,” Michael said. Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York also has played a role in his spiritual formation.

Lee considers his strongest gifts to be pastoral counseling, teaching and preaching.

“I have been in the emergency room at 3 a.m. and held the hands of a patient who failed at a suicide attempt,” he said. “This experience was immeasurably strengthening to my ministry. I try to be the chaplain that my father and I needed when he was dying.” 

At Wilshire, Lee teaches the Faith Plus Sunday school class in the Young Adult division.