Sean Michael Lee, 50, died on September 13, 2026, after a life defined by service, loyalty, courage, and an almost reflexive willingness to go wherever he was needed most.
Credit: https://www.heritagecares.com/obituaries/Sean-Michael-Lee?obId=49584814
Sean’s funeral to celebrate his life with full military honors will be held on Tuesday, September 22nd at 2pm at Weddington Methodist Church with Rev. Dr. Terry Moore officiating. He will be laid to rest with his fallen comrades in Arlington National Cemetery.
Born March 26, 1976, Sean was the son of Gale Wyman and William Patrick Lee Jr., who preceded him in death.
Sean spent more than 20 years serving his country in the United States Army, including multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with the storied 82nd Airborne Division. He was, to his core, a paratrooper. Long after he took off the uniform, the values forged there remained the organizing principles of his life: duty, loyalty, competence under pressure, and an unwavering commitment to the person beside him.
His service did not end when his military career did.
For more than a decade afterward, Sean continued serving veterans and his country, including through his work with The Independence Fund and, most recently, at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where he served as a political appointee under Secretary Doug Collins.
But no job title adequately describes what Sean did with his life.
When Afghanistan fell in 2021, Sean helped coordinate the safe passage and evacuation of thousands of Afghan allies and others desperately trying to escape the country.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Sean went toward the war. He helped establish field hospitals and participated in the extraordinary operation to evacuate gravely wounded Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall from Ukraine.
When Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, Sean again went where people needed him. He slept in his car and worked in the disaster zone, helping deliver aid and assisting communities when roads, communications, and ordinary systems of support had collapsed.
Again and again, when circumstances were dangerous, chaotic, uncomfortable, or seemingly impossible, Sean went.
That was the pattern of his life.
Send me.
Sean was proud of the missions he undertook and the lives he helped save, but the titles and headlines were never what mattered most to him. He was proudest to be a paratrooper, a brother, and an uncle.
He is survived by his brother, James Lee; James’s wife, Adriana; and their son, Jamie.
He is also survived by the sisters the Army gave him, Sarah Verardo and Danica Thomas, and by the nieces and nephews who knew and loved him as family: Grace, Mary Scott, and Elizabeth Verardo; Mila and Liliana Thomas; and Peggy and Teddy Thomason.
The men who first made them family are waiting for him now. Sarah’s husband, Michael Verardo, and Danica’s husband, Allen Thomas, along with so many of Sean’s military brothers who went before him, served beside Sean and forged bonds that long ago ceased to require explanation or distinction between friendship and family. Sean leaves this life surrounded by the family the Army gave him and joins the brothers who were waiting for him on the other side.
Some families are formed by blood. Others are forged through war, loss, loyalty, shared purpose, and the decision to keep showing up for one another. Sean had both.
His life cannot be measured simply in years, deployments, jobs, or missions. It is measured in people who made it home because he went toward danger. In wounded men carried to safety. In Afghan families given a chance to begin again. In communities that received help when they believed they had been forgotten. In veterans whose lives were better because he continued serving them after his own time in uniform ended. And in the children who simply knew him as Uncle Sean: the constant, fiercely protective man who showed up.
Sean spent his life answering the call.
When his country called, he went.
When his brothers needed him, he went.
When strangers were trapped behind enemy lines, he went.
When disaster struck, he went.
When his family needed him, he was there.
Sean Lee lived the ethos: Send me.
And he went, every single time.
His legacy knows no bounds. His absence will be immeasurable.
May his memory be a blessing, and may the lives he saved, the people he loved, and the family he leaves behind carry his name forward.
Services will be announced.
[This obituary appeared on the Heritage Funeral & Cremation website.]