William Edward Lee

Born at Boston on 15 November 1914, the son of William E. Lee and Elizabeth Herbert Lee, he was drafted by the New York Yankees as a pitcher but chose college instead. He graduated from Harvard in 1938 and spent twenty-two years with Filene’s of Boston, where as branch stores manager he opened most of its suburban branches (obituary). Cudge Ellingwood met him in New York in 1948: “a big, dark-haired six foot [hw: five] guy named Bill Lee, who was the manager of Filene’s branch stores out at Wellesley Springfield and down on the Cape.” Joyce had met him at a Filene’s employees’ dance when she was modelling in Boston. “He was a widower, his wife having died two years before. He had a six year old daughter Virginia” (Cudge’s memoir, scans 159-160).

He married Joyce at the Presbyterian church in Spokane on 26 August 1948. On his first evening with the family she served him strawberry shortcake made with a sponge, and he struggled with it, red in the face, until everyone burst out laughing; the next night he was the one waiting to see Don Dorman fall for it (scan 160).

They lived at Hingham, Massachusetts, then at Pelham, New York, when he went to the J. C. Penney Company in New York City in 1961 as national merchandise manager for its 1,700 stores, and from 1966 at Rochester, where Sibley, Lindsay & Curr recruited him; he became its president, and later its chairman and chief executive. His father-in-law, a keen practical joker, turned up at Rochester disguised as Bill’s new man “Mr. New,” and answered a Rochester news story about a conscience payment of $5 to the store with a mock want ad, signed “William E.[?] Lee, President, Sibleys,” asking for $30 more for inflation, which the relatives mailed to Bill from around the country (scans 187-190). A fountain in his name, built to his height of 6 ft 6 in., stands in St. Joseph’s Park, Rochester. He was “most at home at the family cabin on Squam Lake, Holderness, NH.”

He and Joyce retired to Vero Beach, Florida, where he died on 7 July 2006, aged 91, “cherished by his wife of 58 years, Joyce Ellingwood Lee (formerly of Spokane, WA).” His obituary names his six children: Virginia (Mrs. Robert Doyle), his daughter by his first marriage, and Janet, Margaret, Charlotte, William Richard and Alyson; and twelve grandchildren. His brother Herbert and his sister Elizabeth had died before him; his sister Marie survived him.

Open questions

• His first wife’s surname (Loupret[?], from one extract) and when she died.
• The full text of his obituary (Boston Globe, 23 July 2006; TCPalm, 30 July 2006).