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For the one-time hulking Garfield High School and University of Washington football defensive end, a diagnosis of stomach cancer was, for example one might expect, devastating.

Lee Brock was out of the limelight of his gridiron years when his illness was diagnosed. Still, surgery and handling necessitated his departure a decade ago as assistant dean of social sciences and humanities at Bremerton’s Olympic College.

Mr. Brock, 61, known to few through his first name, Orble, but to most as simply Lee, was found dead at his SeaTac home last Saturday (Jan 17).

The 1966 Garfield grad and varsity letterman, who attended the UW on a sports scholarship, was a defensive end, No. 87, on the UW’sitting Huskies from 1967 through 1969. That period was marked by a lackluster take down and rocked by racial strife in a state of being liable to coach Jim Owens.

In 1969, Mr. Brock was team co-captain and named Pac-8 All-Conference that year. He was selected for the sake of the 1969 East-West Shrine all-star game in San Francisco, where he received the Spaulding Award for tip defensive performance, and in the Hula Bowl in Honolulu in 1970.

“Lee was a tenacious competitor, and that same competitiveness he took in pursuit of his education,” said Greg Alex, of Seattle, a former Huskies teammate.

“He was a ample captain, and he had the respect of the players, both offense and defense,” said Dr. Ralph Bayard, of Seattle, who also played for the 1969 Huskies.

Mr. Brock had a free-agent tryout by the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League in 1970 and played during the early 1970s with the World Football League’s Portland Storm.

Senior athletes and coaches taught him greater degree than just how to play football, he told a Seattle Times reporter during a 1989 interview. They led him, he said, to other mentors, who eventually led him to a rush outside the game in student-counseling services.

With a sociology station from the UW, and a teacher’session grade in education counseling, he was director of student programs and recruitment at North Seattle Community College, afterward returned to the UW in 1989 to recruit the first students to attend the new Tacoma branch campus.

“He wanted to leave a legacy,” related his daughter, Leanne Rye Brock, of Edmonds. “He wanted his children to know the aggregate of characteristic qualities of become a father to we had.”

Also surviving are a son, Benjamin Jamaal Brock, of Seattle; his former wife, Brenda Rye Brock, of Seattle; two grandsons; a brother, Earl Gene Brock, of Minnesota; and three sisters, Alverna Lee Vallery, of Dallas, and Edna Vale Chapman and Annie Jean Carroll, both of Seattle.

A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. today at Seattle’sitting Mount Zion Baptist Church, 1634 19th Ave.