Longtime Hall Co. businessman dies

GAINESVILLE - Funeral services are scheduled Thursday for Lee Waldrip, a longtime Hall County businessman and auctioneer, who died Monday following a sudden illness.

Waldrip died at his home in Clermont at age 89. Born on April 18, 1918, he was only several few weeks shy of his 90th birthday.

"He died doing what he liked doing, working," said his wife, Colleen Kelly Waldrip. "He was unloading a dump truck load of sand, which Candler Concrete had given him free. If you know Lee, he liked to work and he liked to get things free."

Waldrip had remained active despite some heart problems and a recent tractor accident. "Once he got back on his feet from the tractor accident, he was raring to go again," Colleen Waldrip said.

Just last month he held an auction at his newest auction house in Cleveland.

He founded Lee Waldrip Auction Co. in 1947 and was a Georgia Hall of Fame auctioneer.

Over the years he built up businesses that included taxi cab and bus companies, fleets of rental cars and trucks, auto repair and tire re-capping shops, used car lots, laundromats, restaurants, service stations, wholesale auto-buying and hauling, real estate, construction and auctions.

As a Gideon, Waldrip raised money to place Bibles in hotels, hospitals, jails and other places around the world. He helped found the first Gideons International camps north of Atlanta in 1952.

He grew up in Gainesville on an 11-acre farm his father rented and sharecropped for $20 a month. Lee would later buy that farm along and other land along Washington Street and cover it up in shopping centers. He paid $58 an acre for miles of property on Lake Lanier and developed Lake View Hills and Lake Ranch Estates subdivisions.

During World War II, he was turned down by the military because of scarring on his lungs possibly from being exposed to TB, so he started a bus and cab business to carry workers to the former Bell Bomber plant in Marietta, now Lockheed.

He survived Gainesville's deadly tornado of 1936 while working inside the Cooper pants factory, which was leveled by the storm.

"He said he dove into a pile of pants and that's what saved him," Colleen Waldrip said. "He said 87 of the 108 people working inside were killed."

The funeral will be Thursday at 3:30 at Memorial Park Funeral Home.