William Lee

SHARON — Bill (William) Lee, 86, of Sharon and New York, New York, died in Manhattan on Nov. 15, 2023. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938 to Clara and Arthur Levy. He drew the best banana in his Brooklyn kindergarten class, and since then, he kept going on to bigger and better things, including one of his first freelance positions: illustrator of the assembly directions for the very first Barbie Dreamhouse (1962).

He attended the School of Visual Arts (1960-1964), which prepared him for his career as a cartoonist and cartoon editor for General Media. The satirist and self-described “Investigative Cartoonist” won many awards throughout his life, including the International Humor Award, and his work has been featured in such publications as Compute, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Evergreen, National Lampoon, Omni, Penthouse, Playboy, and Spin.

He traveled the world and was among the first to enter many countries that had been closed to travel by U.S. citizens, including China (1979), Russia (1983), and Cuba (1999). He often described his hobbies as relaxing with a drink and listening to music that ranged somewhere between Hank Williams and Mozart. He was widowed by his wife, Dona Johnson-Lee and is survived by his daughter Jennifer. While he would probably have loved well-wishers to raise a glass of Jack Daniels in his memory, they can also donate to the cancer charity of their choosing, as the loss of his wife of many years to cancer in 1997 made it his nemesis.

The Kenny Funeral Home has care of arrangements.