Tributes

B. Herbert Lee, philanthropist and patron of the arts, died at the age of ninety-two on Tuesday, April 19, in the Waverly Heights retirement community in Gladwyne. He was a long time resident of the Philadelphia Main Line, living in Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Gladwyne. He also had a winter home in Delray Beach, Florida, and before that, in Ocean Reef, Florida, and a summer home on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The youngest of three children of J. Ellwood Lee, Jr., and Edith Haley Lee, Mr. Lee was born in Conshohocken on January 17, 1924, and attended the William Penn Charter School. He served in the Signal Corps of the US Army in World War II and was assigned to General Dwight Eisenhower ‘s headquarters in Grosvenor Square, London, and, after the war ended, in Frankfurt, Germany. Resuming his education, he received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in 1948. Mr. Lee then began a career in business. He was Vice-President for Sales of the Lee Tire & Rubber Co., founded by his grandfather, the noted entrepreneur J. Ellwood Lee, as a spin-off from J. Ellwood Lee Chemical Co., which merged with Johnson & Johnson in 1905. When Lee Tire was taken over in the early 1960s, Mr. Lee moved from the tire business to the automobile business, starting up Devon Motors, a Volkswagen dealership, in the halcyon days of the VW Beetle. After selling Devon Motors, Mr. Lee embarked on a new vocation as a private investor and, with his wife Margery, a collector of contemporary art. Together, their philanthropic support extended to many cultural institutions in Philadelphia, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Mr. Lee became a trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1994 where he established a major Endowed Fund. Mr. Lee is survived by his wife of more than fifty-four years, Margery Peterson Lee; his son Bradford A. Lee and his daughter Barbara K. Lee; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 30. Entombment will be private. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in his memory to a charity of the donor’s choice.

Tributes

B. Herbert Lee

January 17, 1924 - April 19, 2016