SPRINGFIELD, Ohio - The Opening Convocation of Wittenberg University’s 160th academic year will also serve as the first event of the 2004-05 Wittenberg Series at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 1, when best-selling author, lawyer and ethicist Gus Lee delivers the keynote address in Weaver Chapel. This will be Lee’s second visit to the liberal arts college, and he will return again in the spring of 2005 as a Series Writer-in-Residence.

“Honor and Duty: The Importance of Ethical Responsibility and High Expectations” will be the theme of Lee’s lecture. In addition to being the author of five highly praised books, Lee serves as legal counsel to the Connelly Investigation/U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee’s Worldwide ethics investigation.

Lee’s background is as varied as the books he has penned. He boxed for 11 years and was mentored by H. Norman Schwarzkopf while a student at West Point. Lee has served as a drill sergeant, paratrooper, an assistant dean working for low-income and minority students, and as acting Deputy Attorney General for the California District Attorneys Association.

Lee’s book, Honor and Duty, was required reading at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and has been optioned for film. Wittenberg Professor of English Mary Ellen Jones has also been assigning the book as required reading in her course “War and Literature in Film,” for many years. That is how Lee’s first visit to Wittenberg transpired.

Jones called him in the late ‘90s to invite him to share personal anecdotes and lessons from his book, and he accepted, speaking on campus Nov. 19, 1998, about writing autobiographical novels and the cross cultural themes of his novels. Today, Jones and Lee remain friends.

“He is one of the funniest and most profound people I know,” Jones said. “What you read about values and honor in the pages of Honor and Duty, written a decade ago, is still so terribly relevant to our business world today. In an election year when ‘values’ have become almost a cliché, Gus Lee lives his beliefs and teaches them to others with conviction, faith and humor.”

Jones said she admires Lee for his ability to be “incredibly idealistic and realistic simultaneously.”

His first novel, China Boy, was a Literary Guild Selection, which The New York Times called the “Best of 1991,” an American Library Association “Best for the Last 50 Years” and is in its 15th printing. He and Lee Mendelson, producer of “Peanuts” and “Charlie Brown,” co-wrote the screenplay. Tiger’s Tail, another best-selling military adventure, featured Tony Award-winner B.D. Wong narrating the audio version and the book is under option for film by 20th Century Fox.

Lee’s most recent books include a legal thriller, No Physical Evidence, and a family non-fiction memoir, Chasing Hepburn.

Currently, Lee is writing The Way Things Ought to Be: A Primer on Moral Courage, a guide for organizations desiring Aristotelian, integrity-driven operations, hiring and promoting. He is also working on A Reachable Peace, a non-fiction recapture of the events in China Boy and Honor and Duty.

An ethics whistleblower, Lee has advised corporations through values integration, transitions, change initiatives, leadership changes and conflicts, and he has coached CEOs and other executives in leadership skills development.

Lee’s multi-talents have led to appearances on “CBS This Morning,” “CNN,” “NPR,” “Voice of America” and “PBS.” He has also written for Time Magazine.

Lee’s books can be purchased through the Wittenberg University bookstore. When he returns to campus as a Writer-in-Residence in March, he will also give another public lecture at 7:30 p.m., Monday, March 21, in Bayley Auditorium, Barbara Deer Kuss Science Center.

To learn more about the Wittenberg Series, contact Gwendolyn Scheffel, Series coordinator, at (937) 327-7918 or send her an e-mail.