(related: 1)
Instead of mass marriage, Chicago UBF apparently held a UBF "Founders Day" meeting on the week of Samuel Lee's birthday in early October. The point of this meeting? To praise Samuel Lee. According to RsqUBF discussion board posts, the organizer of this meeting seems to have been Ben Toh who also appears to have been the organizer of "memorial services" for Lee in previous years. On the program: An opening message in praise of Samuel Lee by "Mother" Barry, followed by three sogams in praise of Samuel Lee by Christy Toh, Alan Wolff, and ... my mother. The choice of these three people to share such sogams makes me raise my eyebrows, especially the last two people. I'm guessing they didn't volunteer to do this, but I could be wrong. If my mother did volunteer to share one of these Lee "praiseologies," I have to marvel at how different her story is when she's in front of me and when she's in front of UBF "coworkers." If my mother did not volunteer for this, I can only see it as a disgusting attempt to re-educate someone who possessed some shred of independent thinking about the person of Samuel Lee.
More on the beatification of Samuel Lee: The Korean UBF headquarters has dubbed their main auditorium "Samuel Lee Hall" or something to that effect. It's also been reported that Samuel Lee's widow has created a Samuel Lee shrine of sorts in their Chicago house that was destroyed by the January 2002 fire and subsequently rebuilt using UBF funds.
