IRVINE

Art Teacher Learns Life’s Hardest Lessons

Five years ago, Lee Wong was creating intricate illustrations as a technical artist for a top corporation. Then a drunk driver plowed into his car.

After five back surgeries, the 39-year-old Irvine resident is still learning how to walk again, and his hand still shakes uncontrollably when he holds a brush. But during the past five years, Wong has earned a teaching credential and dreams of becoming a high school art teacher.

“As a technical illustrator, detail is very important,” said Wong, who had left Hughes Aircraft for a promising career at Nissan Motor Corp. several months before the December, 1989, accident. “It’s like a surgeon--your career is over when you can’t use your hands anymore.”

Wong said he was drowning in self-pity when his girlfriend, just beginning her teaching career, suggested that he teach art to her students. “She told me I had to stop feeling sorry for myself,” Wong said. “I could no longer paint like I used to, so it was tough.”

After he began teaching part-time at an elementary school in La Puente, Wong was inspired to become a teacher by a 6-year-old boy suffering from a brain tumor.

“He said I was the best thing that had ever happened to him,” Wong said. “He said when he grew up, he wanted to be a teacher just like me and teach me how to paint again.”

Wong returned to college, graduating in June with a teaching credential from Cal State Long Beach. He married his girlfriend and by August had five offers to teach high school art. But he suffered additional complications from his back injury and had to turn down the job offers. He has not given up.

“I’m learning how to walk again, and I’m determined to become a teacher,” Wong said. “This is my dream--I’m going to do it.”