Anthony Lease

Anthony Lease
Born	June 5, 1925 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Died	October 14, 2006 Rancho Mirage, California, USA
ABM	Americas 1965 - 1986
Media

Anthony "Tony" Francis Lease (June 5, 1925 - October 14, 2006) was an American Bahá’í who served as an Auxiliary Board member.

Biography

Lease was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was a successful sportsman in his youth becoming city champion in track and field in High School and he was the top cross-country runner for Pittsburgh in his junior and senior year. In June 1942 he graduated High School and enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served as a senior radioman on several ships including the USS Enterprise which was sunk while he was aboard. He was discharged from the Navy in August 1945 and enrolled in Seattle University settling in Seattle, Washington, and beginning a career in broadcasting after graduating. In the mid-1950s Lease moved to California where he settled in Los Angeles and began hosting a radio program Lease for Life on KRKD which went on to become the top rated Los Angeles program in the late evening hours. He also started a tour company.

In 1957 Lease became Bahá’í, and in May 1960 he chaired a talk given by Rúḥíyyih Khánum in Los Angeles during her visit to America which was attended by 900 to 1000 people. He also spoke at the Los Angeles Bahá’í communities World Peace Day commemoration that year. In 1962 Lease on Life received a commendation from the Mayor of Los Angeles and he arranged for a letter of greeting from the Mayor to the Queen of Tonga to be presented to Dudley Blakely and his wife who were pioneering to Tonga. In December 1964 he spoke at a Bahá’í proclamation meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, held on the occasion of the cities Bicentennial.

At some point Lease was elected to the Los Angeles Local Spiritual Assembly and he became chairman however he retired from the Assembly when he was appointed Auxiliary Board member in 1965 and he moved to Laguna Beach, California, that year where eventually became President of the Local Chamber of Commerce, the First Nighter's Association of the Laguna Playhouse, and the Community Concerts Association. In April 1965 he met with Bahá’ís from Monterey Peninsula and Salinas, California, as Board member, and in June he presented a tree to the Mayor of Beverly Hills alongside Jill Christy, a youth, in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter. In October 1965 he helped William Sears and Florence Mayberry assist a Committee to launch a Victory Teaching Campaign for California.

In May 1966 Lease participated in the Conference of the Hands of the Cause in the Western Hemisphere held in West Englewood, New Jersey, and he spoke alongside Zikrullah Khadem and other Board members at an Auxiliary Board Team Conference in San Francisco in December 1967. In 1969 he became a member of Rotary International and began supporting Rotary conventions beginning with a Rotary International convention held in Sydney, Australia, in 1971.

In April 1970 Lease was reappointed as Board member and in June he lectured at the California Summer School in the San Bernadino Mountains at short notice after another speaker cancelled, and in March 1972 he assisted Florence Mayberry, alongside other Auxiliary Board members, to facilitate a deepening conference in Nevada. As of 1974 his Territorial Assignment as Auxiliary Board member was Southern California and Southern Nevada, and as of 1977 he was Propagation Board member assigned to Southern California. In the mid-1970s Lease's tour company found success giving "Incentive Tours", tours given for broadcasters to use as sales promotions for their advertisers, and in the late 1970's his company began working with Singapore Airlines which became a longstanding business relationship.

In September 1984 Lease made a teaching trip to Thailand speaking at a school in Ban Had Nad, a public meeting in Chiang Mai, and also delivering a talk at a World Peace Day observance at Bangkok University, becoming the first Bahá’í to speak at the University. After Thailand he visited Taiwan where he met with the Bahá’ís of Taipei with Yankee Leong and spoke at two public meetings. His service as Auxiliary Board member ended in 1986 and in 1987 he moved from Laguna Beach to Portland, Oregon where he lived until his wife, June, passed in 2003. he then moved to Rancho Mirage, California, where he passed in 2006 after suffering from congestive heart failure for five months.

Family

Lease married in the 1940s while living in Seattle and had one child, Thill, however the marriage ended. He married his second wife June Hope on February 17, 1957, in Los Angeles after becoming a Bahá’í, and they had a son Mark Anthony. June had two daughters, Rebecca and Tamara, prior to their marriage.