R
New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020
nypost.com
By MICHAEL KAPLANShannon Lee is no stranger to
death. Her father, Bruce Lee, the
actor and martial-arts legend, died
from cerebral edema in 1973, just
before the release of his breakout
film “Enter the Dragon.” A coro-
ner in Hong Kong deemed the
cause “death by misadventure.”
Though she was just
4 years old at the time, Shannon
remembers being “out of my
body” at the mob scene of a
funeral.
Twenty years later, her brother,
Brandon Lee, got shot in the abdo-
men while filming a scene for
“The Crow” in Wilmington, NC. A
prop gun had an errant dummy
bullet lodged in the barrel. It hit
him with the power of gun-pow-
dered ammo.
A middle-of-the-night phone
call from their mother, Linda Lee
Cadwell, roused Shannon from
slumber in her New Orleans
home. “My mom said that there
was an accident,” she told The
Post. “We knew nothing more.”
En route to the hospital in Wilm-
ington, the recent Tulane Univer-
sity grad received a disturbing vibe.
“In the air, I had this energetic sen-
sation; it was as if something
passed through me,” said Shannon,author of the recently published
“Be Water, My Friend: The Teach-
ings of Bruce Lee” (Flatiron Books).
In the book, she describes the feel-
ing of her brother’s “spirit exiting
his body through my own.” Shan-
non explained to The Post: “The
only thing I could think was that
Brandon had died.”
For three years,
through the course of
a failed marriage and
the birth of her
daughter, Wren, now
17, Shannon could not
make peace with the
tragedies. “I struggled
with taking care of
myself,” the 51-year-
old recalled. “I’d shut
down and tune out. I
would stop returning
phone calls and
e-mails until I had the
strength to continue.”
She also developed
unhealthy eating hab-
its. “I’m a comfort-
food gal and the only
way I could ground
myself was to feel full,” she said,
noting her mom’s homemade spa-
ghetti as a go-to.
Then the teachings of her father
intervened. Bruce had gone from
owning a martial-arts dojo in Oak-land, Calif., to being the instructor
of choice for Hollywood A-listers
and co-starring in “The Green
Hornet.” Along the way, he devel-
oped deep thoughts for living and
fighting — maintaining copious
notes.
Decades after her husband’s
death, Linda was
working with an ed-
itor, hoping to pub-
lish the philosophy
of Bruce Lee. She
thought Shannon
might find the mate-
rial interesting. “It
was like three phone
books of writing,”
Shannon said. “An
incredible gift
dropped in my lap.”
Her father’s heart-
felt wisdom and in-
structive experien-
ces — like the time
he refused to go to
the Hong Kong set
of “Enter the
Dragon” until pro-
ducers reinstated
his script revisions — form the
core of Shannon’s book, a combi-
nation of self-help, biography and
memoir.
Boiled down, she said, “the key
to my dad’s philosophy is self-ac-tualization: It’s the fulfilling of
goals and ambitions.” As for
Bruce’s most iconic line — “You
must be shapeless, formless, like
water” — Shannon interprets it to
mean “achieving one’s essence,
being able to work with whatever
is coming at you.”
While poring over his writing,
she was particularly taken by a
single nugget: “The medicine for
my suffering I had within me from
the very beginning... Now I see
that I will never find the light
unless, like the candle, I am my
own fuel, consuming myself.”
It convinced her that she needed
to take control of her grief and find
answers. “I realized that I had been
mildly depressed for most of my
life and [then] became a detective
for my own cure,” said Shannon,
who now lives in Los Angeles and
is an executive producer on the
Cinemax series “Warrior,” based
on a treatment that Bruce wrote
and had hoped to star in.
“I read further into my dad’s
writing, I went to therapy, trained
in Jeet Kune Do [a martial art cre-
ated by Bruce]. I’ve done work
with herbs and various kinds of
massage. A medicine woman
pulled energy out of me. By look-
ing deeply at grief, you come to
understand life.”WISE
WORDS:
In her book
“Be Water,
My Friend,”
Shannon Lee
(inset) writes
about the
philosophies of
her late martial-
arts-star father,
Bruce Lee (left),
who helped her
cope after the
death of her
brother,
Brandon.Getty Images (2); Bruce Lee Family ArchiveDADDY’S GIRL: Shan-
non was just 4 years old
when her dad, Bruce, died
of cerebral edema.A Muslim woman who ran
unsuccessfully for Congress
in New Jersey this year was
removed from an American
Airlines jet at Newark Air-
port Saturday and arrested.
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, an
activist and blogger, re-
counted the incident on
Twitter and in a 15-minute
Facebook video.
“Today I got arrested...
because a man... felt enti-
tled to blow past me at TSA
security, then have me re-
moved from our @Ameri-
canAir flight bc he ‘felt un-
comfortable,’ ” she tweeted.
Al-Khatahtbeh tweeted at
9:18 a.m. that as she was re-
moving her shoes at secu-
rity, “an entitled white man
behind me insisted on cut-
ting me in line. When I said
he could wait like everyone
else, he started going off
about how he’s ‘pre check’
and ‘first class.’ ”
Later, she was removed
from the Charlotte, NC-
bound plane. Al-Khatahtbeh
did not return e-mails from
The Post.
The Port Authority con-
firmed a person was re-
moved from a flight and
taken into police custody.
The TSA claimed no com-
plaints were made about
any passengers at the check-
point. American told The
Guardian it was “working to
understand what occurred.”
Dana KennedyMuslim
gal bust
at airport
Ethiopia’s defiant Tigray
regional government said
Saturday it fired rockets at
two airports in the neigh-
boring Amhara region as a
deadly conflict threatens to
spread into other parts of
Africa’s second-most popu-
lous country.
The Tigray government
said on TV that such strikes
would continue “unless the
attacks against us stop.”
Ethiopia’s federal govern-
ment said the airports in
Gondar and Bahir Dar were
damaged in the strikes late
Friday.
Fighting that erupted in
the northern Tigray region
Nov. 4 has reportedly killed
hundreds. APRocket fire
in Ethiopia