Lee Harry Vyborny was born to Lumir and Jyme Vyborny at the Mercy Hospital in Merced California on November 2, 1943. He had a normal small-town childhood and attended Merced Public Schools where he participated on the football and tennis teams. He enjoyed outdoor activities with his father and brother: fishing, hunting game birds, and skiing. After secondary school, he attended the University of California at Santa Barbara for a brief period.
Lee enlisted in the US Navy in early 1963 and served aboard the fast attack submarine USS Sargo. His initial training included Interior Communications Electrician, Nuclear Power schools. After which he was an instructor at the Nuclear Power Training Unit in Windsor, Connecticut. While an instructor at the NPTU, he was selected to be one of the original twelve crew members assigned to the unique deep submersible, Submarine NR1. Lee qualified as Nuclear Power Plant Operator and Engineering Officer Of the Watch. As such he supervised the operation of the submarine’s nuclear power plant. He also became the first enlisted crewmember to qualify as a Submarine Officer of the Deck. During OOD watches he drove the submersible on the surface and on the ocean bottom.
On July 6, 1968, Lee married Johanna Roden in New London, CT. Johanna and Lee had two daughters, Jennifer, and Catherine. When Lee left the Navy in early 1971, shortly after daughter Jennifer was born, Lee left the Navy and the family moved to Miami, FL. After Lee completed his undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Miami in 1973, They moved back to Connecticut where Lee worked as Design and Production Engineer for the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics in Groton, CT. Catherine was born there in October of 1974.
In early 1978 the family moved to Charlottesville Virgina area where Lee worked for the Sperry Aerospace and Marine Company as an engineer, program manager, and later as a marketing manager for the development and production of shipboard navigation equipment.
In 1988, Lee started Program Support Associates, Inc. Over time he built it into a fifty-person software design and support company specializing in financial management programs for use at headquarters commands of the US Navy.
Lee sold his company in 1999 and spent the next two years writing the book “Dark Waters: An Insider’s Account of the NR-1, the Cold War’s Undercover Nuclear Sub”. It was during that time he met and became friends with Karen White at the York River Yacht Haven in Gloucester, VA where they both had boats. In early 2004, Lee and Karen moved to the island of Vieques Puerto Rico. Lee and Johanna Vyborny were divorced in May of 2005. Johanna died of pancreatic cancer in August of 2010.
Lee and Karen married in February of 2014. They are now retired and still live in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
