Lee Hastings Bristol, Jr. was born on September 4, 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He was stationed at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee from 1943-1944 on a special program for the U.S. Army. At the time, he was Private First Class Lee Bristol, Jr., Col. B. S. V. 3423, Vanderbilt University, Nashville 4, Tennessee (463). He graduated from Hamilton College in New York in 1947. He married Louise Baber Wells in 1950, with whom he had four children. He was awarded a Doctor of Humanities in 1955 from the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Arts, one of the eleven honorary doctorates he was awarded over his career. He worked at Bristol-Myers Company, his family's business, from 1948-1962. From 1962 to 1969, he was president of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He was made a fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada in 1972. he died March 11, 1979 in Syracuse, New York. He is buried in Clinton, New York.