WELDON A. "Bo" LEE

Weldon A. “Bo” Lee, a retired construction executive who worked and traveled all over the world, died Dec. 1 at a nursing home in Fort Worth.

Bo spent most of his career as a builder, working on Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in the 1970s, and commercial projects in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Korea and other locations. He bagged his fifth continent on a visit to Peru in 2019. He never quite retired and was still working on houses until his health deteriorated.

He had battled health problems associated with dementia and passed away surrounded by his family at the James L. West Center for Dementia.

Bo was born Nov. 21, 1937 to Paul Lee, a tool and die maker, and C. Mary Lee, the former Maria Ramona Blau, who was a secretary for the Scottish Rite organization in Houston. There are several stories about how he picked up the nickname Bo. None of them are definitive, but the name stuck.

Bo’s life was shaped by the early death of his father in 1952. He took a series of part-time jobs to support his family while he was in high school and developed a work ethic that stayed with him the rest of his life.

Before house-flipping became a TV genre, Bo was scouting for ugly houses on nice blocks and spending his weekends rebuilding them. His two sons earned their first paycheck cleaning up after a roofing job in the ‘70s. When the boys left for college, he put his high school-age daughter to work.

He was also a voracious reader and a talented musician. He could play anything from Chopin to Little Richard on the piano, and he passed on a love for music to his children and grandchildren.

After attending Houston’s Jefferson Davis High School, he went to Texas A&M University as an Air Force ROTC cadet, class of 1960. He served in the Ross Volunteers and was part of the student government. He graduated with degrees in English and aeronautical engineering.

He met his first wife, the former Jean Sias, while serving in the Air Force. They had three children and divorced in 1981.

After leaving the Air Force in the mid-1960s, Bo tried his hand as a homebuilder, before moving to Clear Lake, where he worked for NASA.

He enrolled in Harvard Business School in 1966, and graduated with a masters of business administration in 1968.

He moved to Dallas and worked for a paving contractor, building roads and other projects across the region, including a defunct drive-through zoo in Dallas and the original access roads at D-FW airport.

Bo was proud of his work and would often excuse his kids from school to bring them to job sites. He took the whole family to the grand opening of DFW Airport in 1973.

The family moved overseas in 1976, spending two and a half years in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

After a second marriage ended in divorce, Bo met and married Helen Kay Campbell in the late 1980s and began what he often called the happiest period of his life.

Bo and Kay moved to Baltimore in 1988, and Bo led a group of managers who bought McCormick & Company’s construction division. Bo led the company, renamed Atlantic Builders Group Inc., until 1996, then hung out a shingle as a consultant and home builder.

When he wasn’t working, he taught a graduate-level class in construction management at Johns Hopkins University. He unwound by building a two-story addition to a house in Baltimore County and gutting and remodeling a historic four-story row house in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill neighborhood.

After Kay’s death in 1999, Bo moved to Dallas to be closer to his family. The whole family – children, step-children and grandkids – often gathered for ski trips in Colorado and weekends at Lake Belton.

Bo was preceded in death by his sisters, Diana Fore and Sue Lohmann.

Survivors include his children from his first marriage, William Albert Lee of Dallas, Michael Sias Lee of Fort Worth and Andrea Jean Lee of Carrollton; four step-children from his marriage to Kay Campbell, Victor Ekholm of Fort Worth, Alison Shumaker of Beckville, Stewart Campbell of Highland Park and Ben Campbell of Henderson; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Bo’s family would like to thank the staff at Atria Grapevine, the James L. West Center for Dementia and Saint Gabriel’s Hospice for their loving care during Bo’s final months.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to Texas A&M University.