Raymond Lee’s deep commitment to Chicago’s Chinese community and the city’s Chinese American culture led him to devote large amounts of his time and resources to helping create cultural institutions in Chinatown, including Ping Tom Memorial Park and the Chinese American Museum of Chicago.

A successful businessman who founded a large food distribution business, Lee also served on Chicago’s Board of Education and on the Chicago Park District board.

“He really wanted to promote the Chinese community,” said Veronica Cardenas, Lee’s longtime financial adviser. “The museum … was such an important part of what he wanted to do to keep the culture and educate people. He had such a giving spirit.”

Lee, 90, died of natural causes on Aug. 31 in Chicago, said his son, Sidney.

He had been a longtime resident of the area at the border of Chinatown and Bridgeport.

Born in Guangzhou, China, in 1934, Lee moved with his family from China to Chicago on Feb. 1, 1950, to help his father with the family’s food business, Quong Yick food company on 23rd Street in Chinatown. The family lived above the business.

Lee attended Haines Elementary School and then graduated from Harrison Technical High School. After that, he attended the University of Illinois, first at Navy Pier and then in Urbana-Champaign.

After his first job working as a stock boy for Quong Yick, he worked for several other food companies. Lee and his wife, Jean, started a store in Chinatown called Golden Country and eventually expanded it to sell groceries from Asian countries beyond China. From there, Lee and his wife began wholesaling Asian products to Asian food stores all around the Midwest under the banner Golden Country Oriental Food.

Long interested in development in Chinatown, Lee served as chairman of the Chinese American Development Corp., and along with his friend Ping Tom, he led the conversion of the 32-acre former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway yard at 18th Street and Archer Avenue into the mixed-use development known as Chinatown Square.

After six years of planning, the retail and housing project broke ground in 1990, with the mall being completed in the early 1990s. Lee saw through the completion of the rest of Chinatown Square about a decade after its groundbreaking.

Lee served on the Chicago Park District’s board from 1988 until 1989, and he served on an interim school board appointed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley from 1989 until 1990.

Tom, who died in 1995, had pushed to turn a stretch of industrial wasteland into a riverfront park for residents of Chinatown. While he was a Park District commissioner, Lee had pushed for the district’s purchase of the first 6 acres toward an eventual larger park serving the neighborhood.

After Tom’s death, Lee remained a driving force in helping the Chinatown neighborhood get the 17-acre Ping Tom Memorial Park, which opened in 1999 at 19th Street and Wentworth Avenue. Today, the park has a pavilion with a pagoda-style roof and an entrance with four 20-foot-tall columns, each adorned with Chinese dragons.

One of Lee’s major achievements was creating the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. Located in the same former Quong Yick building where Lee once had worked and lived, the museum became a reality in 2005, after Lee donated the entire $660,000 needed to purchase the property. Over the next three years, the museum presented seven exhibitions, including a look at Chinese artifacts from past Chicago World’s Fairs and a display of Chinese toys, games and leisure activities.

The museum was gutted by a 2008 fire that destroyed many artifacts, including 23 dioramas that had dated back to the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. Immediately, Lee stepped up to help the museum secure a loan to restore the building, add an elevator and a sprinkler system, as well as do renovations to the third and fourth floors.

“We are an immigrant community,” Lee told the Tribune in 2009. “We wanted to preserve our heritage. We were not going to walk away because of a fire. Everyone said we’ve got to rebuild.”

The Chinese American Museum of Chicago continues in its rebuilt space.

“His legacies are everywhere for everyone to see,” said CW Chan, Lee’s longtime friend and a colleague in the food distribution industry. “Raymond liked to quote how his good friend Ping Tom described him: ‘Raymond always can come up with a simple answer to a complicated situation.’ He wore it as a badge of honor. Indeed, Raymond welcomed and thrived on challenges and got bored by routines and details.”

Lee never really retired, his son said. Outside of work, he enjoyed seeing friends and traveling.

Lee’s wife of 63 years, Jean, died in 2023. In addition to his son, he is survived by three daughters, Bernice Lee, Serena Liew and Medora Lee; eight grandchildren; four sisters, Jeanette Wu, Kam Lee, Rosemary Isono and Ruth Yaffe; and a brother, Ronald.

Memorial services have been held.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/15/raymond-lee-chinatown-obituary/