William Eliot Lee

William E. Lee, 78, of Morgantown West Virginia, passed away peacefully in his sleep on Friday, July 5, 2024. Born in Hartford, Connecticut on June 14, 1946, the son of William and Patricia K. Lee. Bill grew up in New Britain, Connecticut where he attended local schools until he entered the Loomis School of Windsor, Connecticut in 1959. He then attended Reed College in Oregon, Trinity College in Hartford and completed his formal education with a PhD in English Studies from Boston College. Bill taught English and Statistics at various colleges in West Virginia, Japan, and Portland, Maine.

Bill moved to Wileyville, West Virginia in the seventies where he became a valued and helpful member of the local farming community. He then moved halfway around the world to Japan to teach English at the Berlitz School and Kumamato Gakuen University. He met and married Taeko in Japan before returning to the States to live near family in Maine. Bill is survived by his siblings Elizabeth Ann Lee and Christopher Lee, and his brother-in-law Chris Malliet of Maine. He was pre-deceased by his wife Taeko.

Bill was a firm believer in cooperative action and supported food and labor Co-Ops, community gardens, and volunteered as an online tutor in a variety of subjects.

He became a strict vegan at an early age, refusing to harm all critters and according them full respect for their agency and autonomy. He was a skilled gardener, raising much of his own food (and passing on any surplus to friends and neighbors).

Bill had a wide range of interests – equally at home parsing gnarly passages in Chaucer or Spenser and computing arcane baseball analytics, such as WAR. His favorite book was probably Middlemarch, and he was fond of the music of J.S. Bach, the Impressions, and Tracy Nelson. He admired the works of both Monty Python and Akira Kurosawa.

Bill moved back to WV from Portland, Maine to spend the last years of his life happily in Morgantown, West Virginia. He shared his love of gardening with his younger tenants, and kept busy taking courses in philosophy and challenging math-related subjects at UWV. Bill was an active member of Morgantown’s Buddhist community who remember him as a kind, gentle, and generous soul.

Friends will gather together on Saturday, November, 9, 2024 at 11 AM at Fred L. Jenkins Funeral Home Chapel, 10 South High Street, Morgantown, WV to remember our wonderful friend who will be greatly missed. Please bring your fondest memories of Bill to share with family and friends