In a first-floor gallery in the Harold B. Lee Library hang more than 40 detailed drawings of invertebrate sea life, including copepods, sea urchins, and squid. Each was lovingly stippled in ink, not by a professional artist, but by a marine biologist.
BYU professor Lee F. Cox Braithwaite (BS ’59, MS ’62, PhD ’70), known as “Dr. B” to his students, crafted these pieces for a textbook before he passed away in 2020. Invertebrates were among Braithwaite’s favorite creatures, says Heather Braithwaite Bastian (BFA ’99), the youngest of Dr. B.’s 10 children.
“I loved to visit my dad at his office,” she remembers. “I’d often climb up on the stool at his drafting table to draw or do homework quietly while Dad was working.”
During his tenure Braithwaite showed students his creative side with colorful (and accurate) chalkboard drawings during his lessons, but not many knew about his sketches. “It’s nice to display and share what he tucked away for so long,” says Bastian.
Each spring Braithwaite took students and his family to the western coast to teach hands-on marine biology by the sea.
On one of their last trips to Oregon, Bastian reflected on her father’s legacy. “He was awed by the ocean,… almost reverenced by it. I think he passed that on to me, and it’s how I want to remember him forever.”
