Gus Lee

Author

Spring 1964

        Gus attended West Point after Lincoln and served two tours of duty with the US Army, first in the infantry from 1967-68. Gus then attended UC Davis where he was Assistant Dean of Students until 1976 earning his Juris Doctor. He attended The Judge Advocate General’s school and served as an airborne JAG officer from 1976-80. From 1980 until 1984 he was a Supervising Deputy District Attorney for Sacramento County, handling over 200 jury trials. From 1984-89, Gus was the Deputy Director of the California District Attorneys’ Association, leaving to become Senior Executive for Legal Education for the State Bar of California. There he instituted minimum continuing legal education and also was an adjunct faculty for the USC School of Business.

        In the summer of 1989, responding to his daughter’s questions, Gus wrote a journal about his mother, who had died when he was five. In the fall, Penguin purchased it in a surprising three-publisher auction. This became Gus’s first novel, China Boy. In 1994, Honor and Duty was published by Knopf, which also published Tiger’s Tail two years later. Ballantine published No Physical Evidence in 1998. 2002 saw Chasing Hepburn, the epic story of his family’s life in China in the early twentieth century, published by Harmony. His sixth book, Courage: The Point of Decision, is due out from Jossey-Bass in 2006. One was a New York Times Best, another a Chicago Tribune Best, two are required reading in colleges and schools, two are in film development and all have appeared on best seller lists. Gus has been a contributor to Time Magazine and Encyclopedia Britannica. In 2005, the S.F. Public Library chose China Boy as it’s One City/One Book text.

        A nationally recognized ethicist and leadership consultant, he has spoken on integrity, moral courage and leadership to the National Conference of Supreme Court Justices, Smithsonian Institution, Asia Society, Commonwealth Club, State Bar of California and Young Presidents Organization. He has taught leadership to many companies, including Bank of America, Intel, Levi Strauss, Kaiser Permanente and Xerox as well as the DEA, FBI and NASA. He has been an adjunct faculty for the Center for Creative Leadership and the recipient of honorary PhDs from Otterbein and Whitworth. He has lectured at numerous colleges and universities including Georgetown, Harvard, NYU, SMU, USC, S.F. State, Stanford, Berkeley, Davis, Wisconsin and West Point.

        Gus has been on a number of boards of directors, has four times been a whistle blower and resigned from boards to protest management ethical misconduct. He has appeared on the CBS Morning Show with Harry Smith, CNN with Bernard Shaw and National Public Radio with Terry Gross. His numerous awards include the Meritorious Service Medal (1978), Army Commendation Medal and 1st Oak Leaf Cluster, Meritorious Service medal, both in 1980. He was awarded the UC Davis Alumni Citation fro excellence in 1991, the State Bar of California Service Award in 1993, and the Pace Setter Award in 2003. He lives in Colorado with his wife Diane and an adopted child; their daughter is executive director of a non-profit and their son is a college sophomore. He considers his greatest achievement is being a steadfast father and a husband.

        In recognition of his accomplishments, Gus was inducted into the Abraham Lincoln High School Wall of Fame in May 2005.