Laura Murphy was married to Bertram Lee, Sr.
Bertram M. Lee, Sr. made history in 1989 when he became the first African American to hold a majority stake in a major-league U.S. sports franchise. Lee and his partners, who included the late U.S. Secretary of Commerce
Ron Brown, acquired the National Basketball Association’s Denver Nuggets team for $65 million. At the time, Lee stressed that
affirmative action had played no part in the historic ownership deal. “As
African Americans, in these kind of transactions, one of the things we fight is the tendency for people to think we need all sorts of subsidies or crutches,”
Black Enterprise writer Patricia Raybon quoted him as saying. “There are no subsidies here. But then I’ve always said that if we’re given a level playing field, and access to capital, we can do as much as anyone.”
Career: City of Chicago, IL, city bureaucrat, 1961-67; Opportunities Industrialization Centers of Greater Boston, MA, executive director, 1967-68; EG & G of Roxbury, Inc., MA, general manager and vice president, 1968-69; Geneva Printing and Publishing, MA, owner, c. 1969-75; Dudley Station Corporation, Boston, president, 1969-81; BML Associates, Inc., Boston, chair, after 1969;
New England TV Corporation, Boston, senior vice president, then president, 1978-86; Albimar Management, Inc., chair after 1983; Mountaintop Ventures Inc., treasurer, 1984-2003; Kellee Communications Group Inc., president after 1986; Denver Nuggets Corporation, Denver, CO, chair, 1989-92. Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign, finance co-chair, 1984, 1988. Served on the boards of the of Pacifica Radio Network, Boston Bank of Commerce,
Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change,
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation,
Reebok International Ltd., and Howard University. Director of the
Jackie Robinson Foundation.
Can read more about Bertram Lee, Sr. here:
Lee, Bertram M. Sr. 1939–2003 | Encyclopedia.com