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Lee’s youthful aspirations included being a cowboy (of course), food critic (who knew Duncan Hines was a person?), and greeting card writer.

Please join us in celebrating Lee’s nine decades of a life well lived. Lee was born in Chicago to immigrant Jewish parents who moved to Los Angeles in 1944, and by mid century transformed their family into proud financially successful Americans.

Lee’s youthful aspirations included being a cowboy (of course), food critic (who knew Duncan Hines was a person?), and greeting card writer. He graduated from University High School in Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, and UCLA Law School. Somewhere along the line he managed to memorize all 20+ flavors of Life Savers candies, and was happy to recite the list to you for the rest of his life (starting with Wint O Green and ending with ClOve?). He formed life-long friendships with his Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity brothers at Berkeley. Even as accomplished professionals, most of their gleeful stories seemed to feature card playing, ping pong, and mild hazing of pledges.

In the late fifties (think Sinatra or Nat King Cole vs. Elvis), Lee found and wooed the love-of-his-life Grace in law school, managed to pass the bar, get married, and take a big Chevy on an epic honeymoon traveling to western national parks. His first son - Mark - was born nine months later. Lee and Grace became young home owners at the edge of suburban sprawl in the San Fernando valley and contributed to the baby boom by producing five children in the sixties. Lee embarked on a long successful legal career working as a public defender, serving on a task force revising the state penal code, and sitting on the bench as a LA county commissioner. Occasional inappropriate courtroom humor notwithstanding, Lee took the job of serving justice and helping people caught in “the system” very seriously.

Lee treated life like an all you can eat buffet where he was definitely going to get his money's worth. With Grace he enjoyed incredible journeys to see and learn about the world -- camping, museums, ruins, castles, cultural events, environmental education, zoos, etc, -- usually with kids or grandkids in tow. They travelled to all corners of the world, and still their home was a place for gathering family and friends. Even while working and raising kids, Lee managed to squeeze in tennis, beach time, inexpert sailing, taking kids to shoot hoops at the junior high gym, bridge and card games, movies, sports, TV, and listening to music. In a long and very full retirement he seemed to do even more of all of that.

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Lee treated life like an all you can eat buffet where he was definitely going to get his money's worth.

Always ready with a bad joke, trash talk on the tennis court, or a story you might have heard before, Lee would engage with anyone and everyone. He will be missed by his children, grandchildren, great grandson, nieces and nephews, and many others. Please do something fun in his memory!