John J. Lee, retired Chairman and CEO of Hexcel Corporation, died on Saturday due to kidney cancer. Mr. Lee was 64 years old. The one-time New York Knick, former All American basketball player at Yale University, and Brooklyn school-boy legend, was to all who knew him, the incarnation of the American dream. Brought up by two immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Mr. Lee first came to prominence in the early 1950s as a 3-Time All-City and All-American basketball player for Erasmus Hall High School. Elected Captain of the team during both his junior and senior years, Johnny 'Red' Lee led the Brooklyn Public School Athletic League in scoring and catapulted Erasmus to the Divisional Titles in 1953 and 1954. After receiving scholarship offers from over 65 universities, Mr. Lee matriculated to Yale University in the Fall of 1954. As a sophomore, Mr. Lee went on to break all Ivy League scoring records and as a junior, gained national attention when he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated as the "next great Ivy League scholar-athlete." He went on to lead Yale to their first Ivy League basketball title in ten years, was a member of the All-Ivy team for 3 straight years, and achieved All-American accolades during both his junior and senior seasons. In recognition of his remarkable career and symbolizing his position as one of the top collegiate players in 1958, the NCAA elected Mr. Lee to their All-American Silver Anniversary Basketball Team in 1983. After graduating in the spring of 1958 with a degree in chemical engineering, Mr. Lee was drafted by the New York Knicks, and for a brief period of time, balanced an NBA career with his post-graduate studies at Yale. The rigors of both professions soon proved to be too much and, in late 1958, Johnny 'Red' Lee retired from his glorious basketball career to begin an even more amazing ascent into the world of business. After a 5-year stint at W.R. Grace and co-founding a management consulting firm, Mr. Lee spent the next 25 years as a senior executive at 4 publicly traded companies. He began at Barber Oil Corporation and continued at Phibro Resource Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of Salomon, Inc, where he was the President and CEO and as such, was responsible for managing an international portfolio of companies in the industrial, energy, natural resource, metal, transportation, and manufacturing industries. In the late 1980s, Mr. Lee went on to become the President of Tosco Corporation, a multi-billion dollar refiner and marketer of petroleum products. And in 1993, he was recruited to become the Chairman and CEO of Hexcel Corporation, a billion-dollar manufacturer of advanced composite materials. Mr. Lee's tenure at Hexcel will be remembered as one of his crowning professional achievements as he was responsible for resuscitating the company from bankruptcy in 1993 and ultimately growing it into the largest manufacturer of composite materials in the world, with over 6,000 employees world-wide. Mr. Lee has also maintained a long-standing and deeply personal relationship with Yale University. Over the course of the past 40 years, he has acted as a Trustee of the Yale Corporation, National Chairman of the Yale Capital Campaign, Member of the Yale Investment Committee and, in 1989, was a recipient of Yale's highest alumni award, the Yale Medal. In 1997, Yale named the basketball gymnasium where he played his greatest games 40 years earlier in his honor - the John J. Lee Amphitheater is now the home to Yale's men's and women's basketball and volleyball. Mr. Lee was also an active participant in many local and civic activities. He served on the New York City Board of Education Bicentennial Commission; was a successful head coach of Larchmont Junior Soccer league and was president of the Westchester and Fairfield County chapter of Young President's Organization. John leaves behind a loving wife, Gayle, a brother Robert, four children - Jocelyn, Lauren, John, and Roger and five grandchildren-Aidan, Jack, Austin, Simon, and Isabelle. A memorial service will be held on Friday, May 11 at 11AM at St. John's Church in Larchmont, NY followed by a reception at the Larchmont Yacht Club. The Lee family will receive friends at home between 1-5PM on Saturday, May 12 and Sunday, May 13. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to either of the following: Cancer Research Foundation c/o Dr. Janice Dutcher, 640 West 239th Street, Riverdale, NY 10463 OR Cancer Support Team, 933 Mamaroneck Avenue, Suite 102, Mamaroneck, NY 10543.