Lee and His Family
EARLY YEARS
Lee
Fisher’s Ohio roots run deep. The grandson of Eastern European immigrants who moved
to Ohio in search of the American dream, Lee was raised in Cleveland by Stan and
Elaine “Boots” Fisher. Lee’s grandparents on his dad’s side settled in the small town
of New Philadelphia, Ohio and opened a small women’s dress shop. Growing up, Lee and
his sisters and brother spent every summer in New Philly. Lee’s great-grandfather on
his mother’s side was an immigrant sheet-metal worker from Russia who later went into
the business of converting furnaces into air conditioners.
Lee’s interest in
public service stems back to dinner table discussions with his family about ways to
make a difference in the community. His father Stan grew up in New Philly, played
football at New Philadelphia High School under a coach by the name of Woody Hayes,
and proudly served his country in the Army, stationed in Japan, before returning to
the U.S. to become an attorney. Elaine Fisher, Lee’s mother, was an avid reader who
took out a book from the public library every two weeks for 30 years, and a loving
homemaker, who dedicated her life to raising Lee, his sisters, Barbara and Susie, and
brother, Richard.
EDUCATION
Lee learned
early on the value of a good education and the necessity of hard work from the values
and ideals his parents instilled in him. He attended primary and secondary public
schools in Shaker Heights, a streetcar suburb of Cleveland. After high school, Lee
attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio and earned his law degree, and later a
master’s degree in nonprofit organization, from Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland.
While in college, Lee and his brother Richard were in a serious car
accident during a camping trip to Idaho. It was unclear whether Lee would live or
ever walk again, but after three months in recovery, Lee was healthy and able to
return to Ohio. This crisis, coupled with his mother’s later battle with non-Hodgkin
lymphoma, made Lee determined to never give up the struggle for every American to
have health care.
PUBLIC SERVICE
Following law school,
Lee married Peggy Zone of Cleveland, a graduate of The Ohio State University and the
daughter of the late Mary and Michael Zone, both longtime public servants in
Cleveland.
Soon after their wedding day, Peggy and Lee were walking door to
door and making phone calls on behalf of Lee’s first campaign for the Ohio
legislature. As a newly elected State Representative, Lee was voted by his
legislative colleagues and the Statehouse press corps as Ohio’s Outstanding Freshman
Legislator. More important to Lee, though, were his efforts to balance his career in
public service with the needs of his family. It was during Lee’s second term in the
legislature that he and Peggy’s first child, Jason, was born.
During Peggy’s
pregnancy, she and Lee saw a TV show about the disappearance of a little boy in
Florida named Adam Walsh. Lee was disturbed to learn that Ohio had a better system
for tracking missing cars than missing children. So he worked closely with John
Walsh, Adam’s father, to write Ohio’s Missing Children law, which helps to prevent
kidnappings and find missing children.
During his years in the legislature,
Lee earned a reputation as a hardworking, effective author of sound laws, including
the Missing Children Law; the Hate Crime Law; the Crime Victims Assistance Law; the
Hospice Licensure Law; and the Child Safety Seat Law. He also led the legislative
fight to secure critical funding for Ohio legal aid services.
After 10 years
in the state legislature, Lee decided his commitment to creating positive change for
Ohioans could best be fulfilled as our state’s attorney general. Lee was elected as
Ohio Attorney General in 1990. The next year, he and Peggy welcomed their second
child, Jessica, to the family.
During his four years as attorney general, Lee created the
national award-winning Operation Crackdown program, shutting down hundreds of
dangerous drug houses throughout Ohio. He also established the first-ever statewide
law enforcement and crime victim conferences, which are now annual traditions in
Ohio’s law enforcement community. Lee successfully defended the constitutionality of
the Ohio Hate Crime law before the Ohio Supreme Court (the same law he authored as a
State Senator years earlier). The Columbus Dispatch described Lee as an “innovative
crime fighter.”
Lee later led the Center for Families and Children in
Cleveland, one of the largest human service organizations in Ohio. Leading a team of
over 300 professionals, Lee focused on child care and early childhood education,
after school programs for youth at risk, a nationally recognized fathering program,
and mental health services. He founded and co-chaired the Mental Health Advocacy
Coalition and received the Nonprofit Executive of the Year Award and the Visionary
Innovation in Business Award from Smart Business Magazine for his innovative and
entrepreneurial leadership of the Center for Families and Children.
A NEW FIGHT
When Ted Strickland asked
Lee to run as his running mate in 2006, Ohio was just beginning to feel the effects
of the Bush Administration’s misguided trade policies, failed economic program, and
disastrous fiscal stewardship that ran up our national debt and cost thousands of
Ohioans their jobs. Lee wasn’t willing to sit on the sidelines while hardworking
Ohioans suffered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
As
our Lieutenant Governor and Director of the Ohio Department of Development for the
first two years of the Strickland-Fisher administration, Lee has worked tirelessly
alongside Governor Ted Strickland, to retain, attract, and create jobs to grow Ohio’s
economy.
Whether it’s as a father, husband, teacher, children’s advocate,
champion for social justice and human and civil rights, Ohio’s chief law enforcement
officer, or Ohio’s chief economic development leader, Lee has devoted the past 29
years to getting real results, finding real solutions, and making a real difference
in the lives of people throughout Ohio. He now wants to bring those years of
experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, of making change happen
and getting real results to Washington where he can fight for a better future for all
Ohioans.
LEE’S FAMILY
Lee and Peggy live in Shaker Heights.
Their oldest child, Jason, is a documentary filmmaker and a graduate of Syracuse
University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Their daughter Jessica is a freshman
at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio.
Accomplished and successful in her
own right, Peggy was the President and CEO of Zone Travel for 30 years; she sold her
business in 2005 and now leads The Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio, a human
relations organization that advances diversity, challenges assumptions and advocates
for understanding through education and training.
Peggy’s business and
community leadership was recognized nationally when President Clinton appointed her
as one of 11 national Commissioners of the White House Conference on Small Business,
and the only Commissioner from Ohio. As a U.S. Small Business Commissioner, Peggy
traveled the country convening forums with business leaders about small business
issues. The Women Business Owners Association honored her as one of the “Top 20 Women
Business Owners in Northeast Ohio” and she received the YWCA Woman of Achievement
Award. Peggy was a delegate to the first-ever White House Conference on AIDS, and was
honored by the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland for her more than a decade of
leadership on AIDS issues.
Peggy currently serves on the Board of the Cleveland Clinic Western Regional Hospital, Neighborhood Progress, Inc., and the Community West Foundation.