If he had only sold cars, it would have been a hollow career.

But Shepard Lee – who nurtured his father’s auto business into Maine’s largest string of dealerships – has done much more.

“I had to,” said Lee. There were causes to promote. Injustices to fight.

On Monday, the 77-year-old businessman is scheduled to accept an award from the Maine Bar Foundation.

Named after the late Sen. Edmund Muskie, the foundation’s Muskie Award is given annually to a Maine person who has shown a lifelong commitment to justice for poor and elderly Americans. Past honorees include former Sens. William Cohen and George Mitchell and the late Duane “Buzz” Fitzgerald.

Lee was born in 1926 in Lewiston. Then, his name was Shepard Lifshitz. He was the only Jewish boy in a neighborhood dominated by French Canadian and Irish people.

Lee’s parents were Russian immigrants. He experienced little anti-Semitism. However, he learned to sympathize with minorities.

He attended Lewiston High School and Bowdoin College. He anglicized his name as a young man, after a brother changed his. Then, at 21, he went to work in the family businees. Soon, he was doing humanitarian work on the side.

He helped found a Lewiston area chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and began work in the Democratic Party.

He worked on political campaigns, organized for the American Civil Liberties Union and served on the Auburn School Committee for seven years.

By the 1960s, he had become friends with some of Maine’s most powerful and respected politicians, including Muskie.

“He was a good friend,” Lee said. “When he was in the area, he’d stay at my home.”

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter chose Lee to help organize a White House Conference on small business.

Lee continues to work on the board of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute and on the Finance Authority of Maine. He lives in Cape Elizabeth with his wife, Candice Thornton Lee.

Monday’s award presentation is scheduled for 6 p.m. at Portland’s Holiday Inn by the Bay. Speakers will include Gov. John Baldacci.

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