The Making of a Hero: Tom Lee’s legacy
The Tom Lee monument, which has been in Tom Lee Park since 2006, has at times been an indicator of the city’s mood, including a green glove stretched across Lee’s hand at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in March 2020. (Bill Dries/The Daily Memphian)
If Tom Lee’s legacy was just the 32 people he saved from drowning on the Mississippi River 100 years ago, it would still be considerable and difficult to fathom.
“There’s people that are alive now ... just because of the fact that he saved their relatives,” said Lee’s great-grandson Johnny Williams, who recently discovered his connection to Lee. “My heart goes out to the people who lost their lives. But my heart also goes out to the people he saved.”
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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