Tee was a larger than life character who never tired of adventure and diverse experiences. College proved a poor fit following Deerfield, and by the late '70s, Tee had carved out a career working in live entertainment. Over the course of 18 years, Tee worked on 4,000+/- live entertainment events featuring some of the top performers in Pop, Rock, Jazz, Broadway, Opera, TV and Film. He wore a variety of hats which included audio engineer, production and technical director and tour manager, and this experience in acoustics and related fields led him in a new direction as an entrepreneur. In 1997 Tee started an on-line outlet for upgraded Russian microphones which he then sold in 2003 and founded Taylor Hohendahl Engineering (T.H.E. AUDIO) to concentrate on a totally new design of microphones with proprietary electronics and manufacturing techniques. He moved to Buenos Aires in 2004 where he could more economically manage some costly health issues he was having at the time and set up a lab there.
Tee and his wife moved back to the United States in 2010 where he worked for several years in government contracting, specializing in matters involving the GSA, Department of Defense, U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers and related agencies. The last several years he was involved in the local music scene where he and his son worked at a spot that Tee described to me as "the hottest small music venue in Knoxville". Despite angioplasty and stents in 2017, Tee maintained a sense of humor, writing me after the procedure, "Somehow my reading material stack has gone from economics and science fiction to nutrition and history! Maybe the good doctors at the University of Tennessee changed a few brain cells during the procedure(s)..... who knows and who can tell?" Outside of work Tee continued to pursue a diverse range of interests which included cymatics, spatial localization and acoustics/wave propagation science, law studies and accounting forensics.
Tee would visit me on his occasional trips to New York, one of which coincided with a dinner I hosted in 2005 (dubbed the "G-7" dinner because there were seven of us from the Class). The next day Tee wrote the following which seems prescient on the eve of our 50th, "Once again, in reflections this morning, I am amazed at not only the diversity of our class, but at the many, many things that bind us together. No matter that I did not "hang out" a lot with many of the classmates of the last G-7 dinner; we had an immediate and deep bond that transcended any of our previous experience together and emanated from a respect for the intelligence, perseverance and experience of the last 36 years. In celebrating all of the things that are similar and that bring us together we have celebrated the best of ourselves and the best of what our "Deerfield experience" gave us. This is what our class shares and what we should always support."
Tee's widow wrote me last night that the local music venue where he worked part-time would be holding a Celebration of Life for him this Sunday afternoon. Hundreds of musicians in the area worked with him and loved him.
DWS
