BILLINGS — He is one of the most recognizable faces in Billings from his famous car commercials over the past three decades, but there’s a lot you may not know about Ernie Lee and what he’s doing to help our communities.
“Seatbelts on? Dad? Yep. Ethel?" says Morgan in a television commercial. Morgan is Lee’s oldest daughter, and when she turned 16 she got to drive her family for the first time, in prime time, in a commercial for the local Subaru dealership.
The Lee family has gone through major rites of passage in the public eye.
“You ready?" says Lee continuing his lines in the Subaru commercial. “I’ve been ready for this for 16 years,” replies Morgan. “Let’s roll,” says Lee as his daughter drives off.
“Most people know me from the TV commercials I've done from the age of 17,” says Lee.
“Join us for yappy hour on October 22,” says Lee in yet another commercial, one of more than 100 he produced and starred in over the years. “The best day of a sheltered pet's life is the day it is adopted.”
Lee certainly has a big heart for his community, furry friends and family. He also has a passion for creating an equal playing field with plenty of opportunities for little people.
“Obviously I have dwarfism, and so locally my wife Kelly and I, we’ve spoken to several schools as to understanding dwarfism, because it's not something that the average person sees every day,” says Lee.
They teach kids preferred terminology: little people, people of short stature and answer common questions.
“The most obvious questions are simply, 'What’s your house like? How do you drive a car? Do you have kids that are little?' You basically just open up that conversation so that they understand, yep my kids are small just like I am. Yep, I do drive a car and so do my kids. Yep, my kitchen has been cut down so that when I go to the kitchen counter it's my height,” says Lee.
Most importantly, the students quickly learn that Ernie and his family are just neighbors. Members of the community.
“That's the definition of community, it's somebody that lifts somebody else up,” says Lee.
Lee was born in Queens, New York in 1969, and adopted shortly after birth to a little family in Sunburst, Montana via Little People of America, an organization that made the match.
“That community of Sunburst, well it's the Montana story,” says Lee.
That tiny town, population 604, is the foundation of a life that led him and his wife to adopt their youngest child from South Korea through the same LPA program he was adopted through. In fact, the couple founded the Montana Chapter of Little People of America and hosts annual get-togethers. He’s also spoken about equity, diversity and inclusion at major auto dealer conferences and plans to continue advocacy work.
“You, in the actions that you take, can decide who you are so take the right actions,” says Lee. “Billings, Montana is about great neighborhoods. Let’s be great neighbors.”
Lee has a condition called achondroplasia and he says if you see someone with a disability, get to know them, and be a great neighbor
