NEWS FROM THE DIOCESE OF KNOXVILLE
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AI expert Dr. Kai-Fu Lee returns to alma mater By Dan McWilliams
hat a difference a sister can make in the life of one of her students. Before he became the internationally known venture capitalist, artificial-intelligence expert, and bestselling author that he is today, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee was a seventh-grader at St. Mary School in Oak Ridge in the 1970s who had just emigrated from Taiwan and did not know a word of English. That’s when Sister Mary David, OP, principal of St. Mary, stepped in. She taught the young teen English on her lunch breaks, catapulting him on a career that saw him earn a doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University and serve as an executive at Google China, Microsoft, and Apple. St. Mary School honored Dr. Lee on May 6 as he returned to his alma mater for a visit to classrooms and a school-wide assembly that included Bishop Richard F. Stika and Oak Ridge mayor Warren Gooch among its guests. The day meant a great deal to Dr. Lee, he said. “It brings back a lot of memories and also reminded me again what a difference that a great education means,” he said. “St. Mary’s was where I went from knowing zero words in English to becoming fluent in six months, and also Oak Ridge is the city in which I got the best
Dr. Lee continued on page B2
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education one could have in those days. Seeing all the classrooms and teachers and the energy and the inquisitiveness of the students—I think that spirit is still here. This is still the best school.” Dr. Lee spent only a half-year at St. Mary before going on to Jefferson Junior High for eighth grade and graduating from Oak Ridge High School in 1979. But that short time at St. Mary made an influence on the young man. “It did, because I came not speaking one word of English, so it was arguably, theoretically the toughest half-year, but people here made it so easy,” he said. “Sister Mary David was the principal, and she took every lunch period to teach me English. She had to get a first-grade English textbook and start with, ‘run, Spot, run.’ Can you imagine a seventh-grader going through that?” he added with a laugh. Dr. Lee’s May visit to St. Mary was his first in more than 30 years. Even after his long career, he still recalls his days at the Catholic school in Oak Ridge. “I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends. Today three of my classmates from St. Mary’s came, and one more will see me tomorrow. All of them remember the days,” he said. “It’s very special. There were very small classes, so the students
DAN MCWILLIAMS
St. Mary-Oak Ridge honors the internationally known venture capitalist and author at a school assembly
Return visit Dr. Kai-Fu Lee speaks to fifth- through eighth-grade students at St. Mary School in Oak Ridge. As a seventh-grader at St. Mary, Dr. Lee learned English from school principal Sister Mary David, OP. got to know each other. People got along; there weren’t cliques of people. Everybody had the same faith and had the same warmth and compassion, and there was a group where people were encouraged to ask questions and ask why and people were asked to raise their hands. “That was important to me, because from an Asian education there was not as much encouragement in asking questions and asking why, and the teacher didn’t call on the students nearly as much—partly cultural but partly also the class size was much bigger.”
Dr. Lee is now the head of Sinovation Ventures in China. In 2018 he published AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. For his Ph.D. thesis at Carnegie Mellon, he developed the world’s first speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system. While visiting St. Mary, Dr. Lee fielded questions from fifth- through eighth-graders on topics such as his favorite countries to live in, his time at Google China, and what field he would work in if he wasn’t in com-
Knox bagpiper’s goal is to ‘make a joyful noise’ Katie Helms performs at Church events around the area in memory of a son who passed away
BILL BREWER
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agpiper Katie Helms can be seen playing at many Knoxville-area Church events, and she says her goal is simply to “make a joyful noise.” “That’s what the Scripture says to do, and that’s my goal,” she said. “In I think it’s Colossians 3:16 and 17, it says, ‘make songs and hymns,’ and then it says, ‘whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.’ That’s my disclaimer— I’m trying to do it for Him and His service.” The parishioner of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus got started playing the bagpipes about 10 years ago when her son, Gabriel Miller, passed away. “I just needed something new in my life, and something said, ‘Play the bagpipes,’” Mrs. Helms said. “They were giving lessons at the Knoxville Pipe and Drum starting in a few weeks, and I started taking lessons.” She shares with people the reason behind her bagpipe playing, which has become a lay ministry. “When I go to parks and practice, people ask me why I started playing. I say, ‘Well, my son passed away, and I believe in the afterlife.’ I wanted to play a new instrument because I was heartbroken. I just needed something new in my life, and I wanted something loud enough for my son to hear me. If you’re going for volume, bagpipes are your best option. “But my other son said, ‘But Mom, you don’t understand. He’s up there saying, “Be quiet!”’” she added with a laugh. “I share that with people, and it gives me an opportunity to witness a little bit.” She said playing bagpipes is not really difficult to learn. “Bagpipers say bagpipes are hard to learn, and I think”—she laughs—“they say that because they want everybody to think that they’re really good. There are only nine notes and no sharps or flats. It starts with the G below middle C and it goes to the first A above the staff, and that’s all there are. No sharps or flats, even though all the notes are a little sharp and a little flat. “That’s why we don’t play well with others. We can’t typically play well with a band because we’re kind of in a different key. We don’t even really have a key.” Mrs. Helms explained the parts of the bagpipe. “You blow into the bag. You have the three drones. The bag is a reservoir for air pressure to
‘I’m trying to do it for Him and His service’ Katie Helms, after her son died about 10 years ago, “just needed something new in my life” and took up playing the bagpipes. keep the drones—there are three drones, the big pipes, they’re drones, they have the bass A and two tenor A’s. They just play background noise. They have a reed in each one of those, and then the chanter, which has the melody, where there are the nine notes, that has a double reed, so it’s like playing four clarinets at one time. “The whole time you’re blowing into the bag and you’re squeezing, but you’re not squeezing all the way out until the end of the song. You’re just keeping pressure. That’s why when we play ‘Rocky Top’ we can say, ‘Whoo!’ and still be playing.” She wears “a kilt and all the full uniform” when she plays. “The reason we wear a uniform when we play is because it makes people think we know what we’re doing—I mean [correcting herself with a laugh] it’s tradition. We wear our kilt out of tradition. We have a kilt and a sporran, which is like a little purse that hangs in front. That’s where the ancient Highlanders kept their cellphones and car keys. “We have our socks, and most pipers have a
By Dan McWilliams
sgian dubh. It’s Gaelic for ‘dark knife,’ a knife in their pocket. We almost always have a knife in our sock. That’s a sign of respect. In the old days, if I was traveling through the Highlands, I might have my weapon because there might be wild animals or an enemy, and when I come into your home, out of respect I unconceal my weapon and put it in my sock. So pipers always wear that. Sgian dubhs are very expensive.” The knife cannot be taken everywhere she plays. “Sometimes I play in schools, and you’re not allowed to have knives, so I found an antler-handled dog bone at the pet store, so if you see me out there with my sgian dubh it’s really a dog bone. I don’t have to run from the police,” Mrs. Helms said. Mrs. Helms, 59, was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and grew up in Orlando, Fla. She has been in Knoxville for more than 20 years. She and husband John have one living son, Ben Miller, and one grandson, Oliver, who attends Sacred Heart Cathedral School. She had been to Methodist, Assembly of God, and Church of God services before joining the Catholic Church. Her journey to the Church started when she saw the Scriptures in a new light and continued when she played the bagpipes at Knoxville Catholic High School “I’m a new Catholic. I went to RCIA about three or four years ago. I’ve studied the Scriptures—I taught children’s church for 20-some years—and a lot of stuff I saw, to my Protestant friends I would say, ‘Whoa, look what it says,’ this or that, and they would say, ‘No, it doesn’t mean that,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, I think it does. That’s what the Bible says.’ “Then when I started playing bagpipes and they needed a bagpiper at Catholic High School, I started piping and I saw what nice young people there are at that school and what nice young men the football players were. Sometimes the nuns would put books out there for people to take, and I took some, and I read one about Catholic virtues, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s great. You don’t read about that in my church.’ I started looking into it, and some of the things that I had believed, it turns out it’s what the Catholics believed, and some of the questions I had about some Scriptures are answered in the Catholic Church. So I was like, whoa.” Katie Helms continued on page B5