64 Magazine

LIGHTS, CAMERA, CHARM! PUBLIC TV’S MAY-LILY LEE: FULL-THROTTLE CHARISMA, FOUR EMMYS—

AND A GROWING NATIONAL AUDIENCE FOR A NEW SYNDICATED ARTS SHOW

BY sibella giorello. photos by todd wright.

OCTOBER 2001

May-Lily Lee exits Richmond’s Fan Tastic Thrift dressing room in pants so tight her walk turns into a wiggle. “It’s not important to take big steps,” she says. “Or even that I button them. These pants are terrific, don’t you think?” She’s happy, even giddy, for the opportunity to look ridiculous. Eyes shining, she laughs and wiggles back to the dressing room. Nearby, a store worker whose weathered face looks like a badge from the school of hard knocks folds piles of used clothes. He’s paused long enough to watch the pretty Asian girl come and go in her absurd $2 pants. “Your friend has a good sense of humor,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s hard to come by.” Particularly in TV personalities, who, on the whole, tend to take themselves a bit too seriously for sound mental health.

Her host duties at Virginia Currents are without fault, says John Felton, vice president of programming and production for Commonwealth Public Broadcasting. The company operates five public television stations: WCVE and WCVW in Richmond, WHTJ in Charlottesville, WNVT and WNVC in Falls Church. 

“She comes across as warm and friendly,” Felton says. “The medium of television is a very personal medium—you’re only talking to one person when you’re on the camera. And she comes across as though she’s in Mrs. Smith’s living room and telling her personally about what she’s just seen, or is about to see. May-Lily’s a natural in this.”

Yet, as one who’s experienced the live version of May-Lily, watched her wide-eyed wonder that most people lose by age 12, I’ve sometimes felt a nagging frustration watching Virginia Currents. My wish, perhaps futile, was that it offered more of May-Lily’s singular sensibilities: less objective viewpoint, more Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekend.

Now, my wish is coming true. Since September, May-Lily’s full-throttle sense of fun has been airing on WCVE and WHTJ in a 13-week production called Junction 301. An imaginary intersection of arts and offbeat pursuits, Junction 301 covers trapeze artists and the perfect ice cream cone, T’ai Chi and power parachuting. Each 30-minute program also offers a “how to” – how to play steel guitar with poet and picker Greg Donovan, how to grasp piano basics with James Pettis, how to throw pottery with Nguyen Weaver. In each learning segment, May-Lily jumps into the role of student.

And here, the viewer gets a peek into the woman behind that Chinese Cheshire grin.

She is the classic late child.

Hay Kuhn “H.K.” and Loffie “Lu” Lee were in their 40s when May-Lily arrived. H.K., who turns 80 in November, worked for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. For more than 20 years before retiring as plan supervisor. Among other vocations, Lu worked as a real estate broker, helped develop the zip code and was friends with psychic Jeane Dixon. The latter may explain May-Lily’s penchant for analyzing people through astrological signs combined with Chinese birth years. (Let the record also reflect May-Lily is a Gemini and a Dragon, which means even if her job were counting beans, she’d lead an eccentric life.)

Since H.K. and Lu’s first child, H.K. Jr., was born 18 years earlier, the Lees received a rare gift parenting May-Lily – experience, combined with clarity of mind. They needed both for an energetic, precocious child who, by age 14, had adopted the stage name “May-Ling the Magic Maiden” and was performing illusions at parties and on TV. Her high school years were preternaturally focused (less diplomatically, she has described herself as a “nerd,” something that helps her relate to the more eggheaded contestants on the rapid-fire academic bowl Challenge 23, which she also hosts). After winning the Maryland Distinguished Scholar Award, May-Lily finished her studies at the University of Maryland in two-and-a-half years, concentrating on journalism with a minor in economics.

In the interest of full disclosure, let the record reflect that I have known May-Lily Lee about 10 years, that she is of robust mental health. We met around the time she started as reporter, and then later host, of Virginia Currents, the award-winning weekly program airing on many of the state’s public broadcasting stations. 

Virginia Currents is now celebrating its 10th anniversary.  Over those years, its fans have grown loyal and legion with May-Lily, sending cards and e-mails to the Community Idea Stations raving about her ebullient on-air personality. Off the air, she emits equal light and has bestowed some of the best belly laughs of my life, taught me untold amounts of obscure trivia, and demonstrated the nuances of negotiating non-verbally at tag sales (once addicted to bargains, May-Lily is much better now, thank you). But most admirably, she has lived a quietly outlandish life and explores the world with a curiosity no cat could match. Her Southside house brims with kayak, piano, 10-inch nails set up as floral arrangements, wall art that makes you say “Hmm,” and enough books to launch her own library.

Once, I called to invite her to go junking. “I’d love to,” she said, “but I’m going skydiving.”

 “You know how to skydive?”

“No,” she said. “That’s the point.”

“The program is a perfect example of May-Lily,” says Mason Mills, the show’s producer/director. “Junction is so much like May-Lily, who likes to do all kinds of things. For years, Mills and May-Lily have been kicking around ideas for a show offering both information and fun, curiosities and comedies. “All of a sudden one day we were eating lunch at Willow Lawn and May-Lily said, ‘How about this. How about a how-to and minipacks [short features] of inspirational pieces.’ And she just went from there. She just popped it into her head to marry these things. Usually you have a how-to show that bases everything on the how-to format. With this program you could have a piece about people singing gospel and a piece about trapeze and then go to how to make clay pots.”

Apparently, I’m not alone in recognizing the program’s potential. Distributed by American Public Television in Boston. Junction 301 will be picked up by other PBS stations across the country and ha landed as underwriters Richmond-based heavy-hitters Dominion and Verizon. 

“We’ve gotten comments from people nationally saying she’s wonderful, the personality comes through,” say Mills. “I remember going. Yeah, exactly. She’s got the look and the touch on the air, and in person.”

So this girl in skintight pants? She’s wiggling into the national market. All I can say is, Hallelujah.

In 1985, she came to Richmond to work for WTVR-Channel 6, then moved on to the station’s radio arm, WTVR FM/AM, before landing at WCVE. Given her personality, she’s a good fit for public broadcasting—earnest, egalitarian, ambitious but not cutthroat. Her drive to make every program perfect, however, never wavers. “She works very hard,” says John Felton.

Rewards have been ample: four Emmys, followed by a list of awards that literally runs an arm’s length.

Yet May-Lily cites less obvious honors. She works with intelligent, talented, conscientious people. Hours never exceed 9 to 5 – “perfect for someone like me who suffers from professional attention deficit disorder.” And the door to her office (shared with two other Virginia Currents contributors) opens to a large Rand McNally map of Virginia. May-Lily looks at the map with open adoration.’’

I just love jumping in the car and following the road,” she says, her fingers running along faint lines, “knowing that we’ll come to some place that just transports you.”

 Not long ago, she hopped in her ’91 Ford Escort wagon and drove to Tight Squeeze, Va. Just because. Coming back, she took a road less traveled and reached a crest just as a middle-aged woman in Lovingston was herding peacocks with a broom, admonishing the birds like errant children. In the peak of mating season, the peacocks were pursuing mythical hens. “Peanutty! the woman called. “Wild Man!”

May-Lily pulled over, whipped out her camera. The Peacock Lady aired on Virginia Currents and repeated in the second episode of Junction 301.

Curious and inquisitive, May-Lily seems almost guileless at times—an unusual but charming quality in a seasoned media personality. Maybe it’s her dimples. Or the twinkle in those brown eyes. But May-Lily will wander into a junk shop, come across some useless accessory for her burgeoning home and wind up finding out a guy named Tom lives behind the store and paints folk art so he can save up enough money to buy some teeth. Tom, in turn, will tell May-Lily more things, more stories, and lead her to ever more people and places.

This is why Mills sees Junction 301 as ideal May-Lily material: Her life sometimes proceeds like Alice in Wonderland.

Two years ago, May-Lily and her father flew to Hawaii to scatter some of her mother’s ashes (Lu passed away in 1999). H.K. can be counted among singer Don ho’s most ardent fans, and a visit to the great man’s evening show in Waikiki was on the family’s agenda. As they entered the theater, H.K., hoping word would reach Ho, made appoint of telling the greeter his daughter was a singer, too (May-Lily released a CD of original songs, Actualities, in 1995). The Lees took their seats, and, despite large signs that trumpeted NO VIDEOTAPING, May-Lily uncharacteristically broke the rule and hit the record button on her video camera. She rationalized her crime knowing the tape would be a gift for her mourning father.

Halfway through the program Don Ho hollered, “May-Lily come up here!” Heart thumping, she hit the OFF button. But all Don HO wanted was a song. 

The following night, other plans fell apart. H.K. suggested they go see Don Ho’s show again! Reluctantly, May-Lily agreed.

“May-Lily come up here!” cried Don Ho, recognizing her.

Passing her an electric guitar, he told her to choose a song, any song. “But we can only do a once-through because of time,” he said.

You mean I can’t play it 12 times until I get it right?”

The crowd roared, and the veteran showman broke into a wide smile, caught off guard by her poise. She sand a lovely version of Paul Simon’s Slip Sliding Away,” and Don Ho, behind his Hammond organ, kept leaning back with stricken admiration, as though he couldn’t believe this pretty girl—this tiny bubble plucked from the crowd—had the voice of a bird. “Definitely a talent,” How said as she left the stage.

When H.K. returned to Maryland, he sent Don Ho a thank you and May-Lily’s CD.

Eighteen months later, H.K. called: Don Ho is playing in Pennsylvania! Will May-Lily take him to see the great one? Of course. But weather and traffic conspired, and the Lees arrived late. At the end of the concert, Don Ho was signing autographs and shaking hands with fans. He glanced up. “May-Lily” the 71-year-old singer said. “I enjoyed your CD.”

Car loaded with $4 designer silk blazers, $10 leather handbags, Steven King hardcover books (which May-Lily collects, along with rocks an cameras) and two-for-one travel trunks, we head for Brown’s Island. May-Lily wants to videotape the Latin Ballet for a piece to run on Junction 301and Virginia Currents. The two programs will share arts features that May-Lily and Mills produce.

Her tiny frame hoists about 60 pounds of camera equipment. “We’re looking for the Latin Ballet,” she tells a security guard.

“They’re gone. They went on at 5. It’s 6 o’clock.” May-Lily was told the group would go on at 7. Sotto voce, she leans over. “You know what? We were just two busy trying on two-dollar pants.”

For the next 20 minutes she scours the crowd on Brown’s Island for the ballet’s director. Her dark eyes turn glassine with possible shots and stories—expressive faces, memorable couples sashaying—but no ballet director. On the way back out, she sees Latin folk dancers congregating. Children gather, too. May-Lily lurks, asking questions, quizzing people, walking around the stage several times. Then she mikes a guy with a battery-operated contraption. “This might be just as good as the ballet,” she says, bending toward the camera’s eyepiece.

What transpires is the sort of ordinary yet poignant scene that has given Virginia Currents its style—and the sort of stuff that is the softer side of May-Lily and thus Junction 301. Here are otherwise unnoticed people engaging in the great mystery and beauty of creative action; somewhat roughshod Peruvian dances, a man going through Spanish-English translations with children. Many reporters would not consider this compelling material, but May-Lily seems captivated by an energetic teacher, who seems to care whether kids know the word for cabbage in two tongues, the dancers who probably hold blue-collar jobs by day and fly by night. Without a trace of boredom or cynicism, she films about an hour of tape and, with the teacher miked, she shoot can air uninterrupted, as is, his voice narrating. It’s what Felton describes as journalism Cinéma vérité, the finger print of Virginia Currents and, to a certain extent, Junction 301. Standing to the side, Todd Pankoff recognizes May-Lily. He comes over to say hello. His wife, Heidi, dances with the Latin Ballet and she offers to find the troupe’s director. Pankoff, who owns a video production company, has also been a technical director for the Richmond Form, and when Mary Tyler Moore came to speak, he recommended that May-Lily moderate.

“May-Lily did a wonderful job,” Pankoff says. “It’s difficult to interview someone like Mary Tyler Moore, and May-Lily wasn’t intimidated at all. She had a real presence about her, a poise.”

Behind him, May-Lily removes the microphone from the teacher. He appears utterly at ease, gesturing, chatting away with a new friend.

Producer Mills sees this phenomenon all the time. “When I first met her, I thought she was great. She was so comfortable and natural and she was so nice off camera. It wasn’t like she came in and turned it on. She’s always friendly. She didn’t change.”

In fact, when pressed, Mills can’t compare May-Lily to anyone he’s ever worked with. She’s “not like anyone I’ve ever met before in TV,” he says. “And yet, she’s exactly what TV needs.”

Airdates for Junction 301 are Sundays at 6:30 p.m. on WCVE and Sunday at 4:30 p.m. on WCVW. The 13-part series runs through December. For Virginia Currents, check local listings in your area.