Queer Places:
Phillips Academy, 180 Main St, Andover, MA 01810
Yale University (Ivy League), 38 Hillhouse Ave, New Haven, CT 06520
Columbia University (Ivy League), 116th St and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Crestlawn Cemetery
Vero Beach, Indian River County, Florida, USA
Burton James Lee III (March 28, 1930 – November 25, 2016) was a physician and oncologist who is best known for having been Physician to the President under President George H. W. Bush and (briefly) Bill Clinton. He also served on the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic.
Burton James Lee III was born on March 28, 1930, in Manhattan, New York City, New York, to Burton J. Lee II and Rosamond Saltonstall Auchincloss.[1] He and his twin sister, Rosamond Saltonstall Lee, were the eldest of four children born to the couple.[2] His other siblings were Susannah (born 1932) and Mary Josephine (born 1937).[3][4] His parents, who wed in New York City on June 20, 1929, were important members of high society.[5] His father was a banker, and his mother a member of one of the most prominent families of New England.[1] His paternal grandfather, Burton James Lee, had been an oncologist and the first clinical director at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center after its relocation.[1][6][7] His childhood idol was his maternal grandfather, Charles Auchincloss.[8] As a youth, Lee attended the Buckley School on New York City's Upper East Side, and then graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.[1] He entered Yale University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1952.[9] While at Yale, he became close friends with Jonathan Bush, George H. W. Bush's younger brother,[6] and with Nicholas F. Brady, the future Secretary of the Treasury under George H. W. Bush.[6] This led to a close friendship with George H. W. Bush.[10] He received his M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1956.[9] Lee interned at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.[1]
On July 23, 1987, through his connections with then-Vice President Bush, Lee was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic.[16] Lee himself said that, as the panel's only practicing physician, "I was going to die before I let that commission fail..."[6] Lee personally reviewed much of the medical literature on HIV and AIDS, and insisted that the commission visit AIDS patients in hospitals and hospices. Aware of how cancer patients are often discriminated against, Lee was greatly disturbed by the much greater discrimination AIDS patients faced. He was particularly moved by the plight of Ryan White, a boy who became infected with HIV while receiving treatment for his hemophilia.[6] Dr. Frank Lilly, a geneticist and openly gay member of the commission, described Lee as a "receptive learner" on HIV and AIDS issues, even though his only experience with AIDS had been the treatment of HIV-infected individuals who had cancer, and commission executive director Polly Gault said Lee played a critical role in overcoming divisions among commission members and in drafting its final report.[6] Lee cast the critical vote in approving the commission's report, which passed 7-to-6.[1] Lee was widely viewed as helping to turn the commission away from being a rubber stamp for anti-gay conservative views and toward championing improved research on HIV/AIDS and treatment of AIDS patients. Lee later credited the militant HIV/AIDS group ACT UP with making many positive contributions to the commission's work.[1]
Burton Lee III married Pauline Herzog in 1953.[28] Their marriage ended in divorce. The couple had three children: Chip, Jackie, and Roz. Lee then married Ann Kelly, and was step-father to her three children from her first marriage: Debbie, Wendy, and Leigh.[1] Lee died of bladder cancer at his home in Vero Beach on November 25, 2016.[1] He was survived by his wife Ann, and all six children.[8]
My published books:
