NORWICH – He was a successful lawyer, a decorated World War II bomber pilot and a national skeet shooting champion, but Edward J. Lee, who passed away Monday, will be most fondly remembered as a family man and gentleman.

Lee, of 17 Hayes St., died yesterday at the age of 88. He had practiced law at the firm begun by his father, beginning in 1946 and retiring in 1999. Despite his failing health, Ed regularly accompanied his wife Ellen to church at St. Paul’s in Norwich, to many family gatherings with his daughters Cynthia, Virginia and Nancy, and to charitable and festival events throughout Chenango County.

He most recently helped to commemorate the law firm’s long and rich legal service to Chenango County at a 100th anniversary celebration attended by family, friends and colleagues. Attorney Tom Emerson, of Lee, Emerson & Ferrarese, remembers his former partner as “a true gentleman, a lawyer’s lawyer, a mentor and a friend.”

He was an aerial gunnery instructor, the first pilot to fly a B-17 bomber and retired from the United States Air Force with the rank of major. He was the first person to be inducted into the New York State Skeet Shooting Hall of Fame and, later, became a member of the national organization.