Early Life Through World War II
Willis Lee, a distant relative of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, was born in the rural town of Natlee in Owen County, Kentucky, on May 11, 1888. The son of Judge Willis Augustus Lee and Susan Arnold, he was known as "Mose" Lee to family and friends.
He entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1904. While at the Naval academy, his Chinese-sounding last name, compounded by his fondness for the Far East earned him the nickname "Ching" Lee.
Following graduation, Lee joined the academy's rifle team twice. He was assigned to the battleship Idaho (BB-24) from October 1908 to May 1909, before returning to the naval academy and re-joining the rifle team. From November 1909 until May 1910, Lee served aboard the protected cruiser New Orleans (CL-22), and then transferred to the gunboat Helena (PG-9). Upon being detached back to the United States, Lee re-joined the Academy shooting team a third time. In July 1913, Lee re-joined the Idaho, and later transferred to the battleship New Hampshire (BB-25) to participate in the occupation of Veracruz.
During World War I, Lee served on the destroyers O'Brien (DD-51) and Lea (DD-118).
Read more about this topic: Willis Augustus Lee
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, world and/or war:
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new,—and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
‘Neath every one a friend.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“In the world we live in ... everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not children’s lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)