Early Years and Military Service
Lee was born in Price, Utah, on January 7, 1899 to Arthur J. Lee (died 1934) and Ida Mae (Leiter) Lee (1874–1980). When he was five the family moved to Fruita, Colorado where they remained until he was in the eighth grade. The family then returned to Price.
During World War I, Lee served in the U.S. Army, lying about his age and passing up his high school graduation in order to enlist. During training in California, the Army kept him there as a trainer for the soldiers going to Europe, believing that he had the excellent people skills needed for this job. This was a decision that Lee initially regretted, as he wished to serve in combat. After the war, he joined his father in the insurance business in Price prior to going into politics.
In 1920 Lee married Nellie Pace with whom he had a daughter, Helen (Nelson) (died 2005). Two years later Nellie became seriously ill, with pneumonia, and then with Hodgkin's disease, of which she died in 1926. The medical expenses from her illness placed Lee in considerable debt. Until the debts were paid, Lee moved into his own garage and rented out his house. Another way he tried to save money was by eating only one hamburger and drinking a quart of milk a day. During this time, his daughter went to live with a grandmother. This experience led to him forming his fiscal conservative views, as he vowed he'd never go into debt again.
On February 23, 1928, he married Margaret Draper (1909–1989) of Wellington, Utah. They had three children, a son, James (born 1930), a daughter, Jon (Taylor) (born 1935), and a son, Richard (born 1944). Margaret fueled Lee's political ambition and had a remarkable memory for names. They were married for over 60 years, until Margaret’s death in 1989.
Read more about this topic: J. Bracken Lee
Famous quotes containing the words early, years, military and/or service:
“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)
“But he answered his father, Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 15:29,30.
“Nothing changes my twenty-six years in the military. I continue to love it and everything it stands for and everything I was able to accomplish in it. To put up a wall against the military because of one regulation would be doing the same thing that the regulation does in terms of negating people.”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)