Lee F. Driscoll Jr., 82, lawyer, executive

In 1968, Lee F. Driscoll Jr. took his seat at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a peace delegate, committed to whichever candidate would end the war in Vietnam.

As general counsel to the food-services firm that would become Aramark, Mr. Driscoll was a bit different from other antiwar delegates, but no corporate rebel. The firm "wanted my husband to be the public image of the company," his wife, Phoebe, said, "and was very supportive of his efforts."

Mr. Driscoll, 82, vice chairman of ARA Services in the 1970s, died of chronic heart disease Saturday at his home in Lower Gwynedd.

His trip to Chicago in 1968 was not out of character.

In 1962, he was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress from a heavily Republican Montgomery County district, his wife said, and prominent in the Philadelphia chapter of Americans for Democratic Action.

Gregory Harvey, a Philadelphia lawyer and a longtime member of the ADA, said Mr. Driscoll was chairman and continued to be active in the ADA through the 1960s and '70s.

At 35 when he ran for Congress, Mr. Driscoll was the youngest chairman in the history of the Committee of Seventy, the Philadelphia political watchdog group.

At 29, he had been appointed to the Board of License and Inspection Review by Mayor Joseph S. Clark Jr.

Born in Germantown, Mr. Driscoll graduated from William Penn Charter School in 1944 and, after summer classes at the University of Pennsylvania, enlisted and saw combat as an Army infantryman in Europe, earning a Bronze Star.

Mr. Driscoll earned his bachelor's degree in English literature at Penn in 1949 but, after his first year of law school there, was recalled to military service during the Korean War.

He earned his law degree from Penn in 1953 and joined the Philadelphia firm that is now White & Williams, becoming assistant general counsel in 1956 to Slater Systems, the firm that became ARA Services and then Aramark.

He became an ARA director in 1973 and vice chairman in 1977. An Aramark spokesman said that Mr. Driscoll retired from ARA in 1984 and retired from the board of Aramark in 2000. He was a partner at Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll L.L.P. from 1984 until 1990.

Mr. Driscoll served two terms as president of United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, in 1981 and 1982.

He was a board member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Free Library of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hospital, and the Public Interest Law Center. He was also a director of CoreStates Bank, Independence Blue Cross, and First Pennsylvania Bank.

He was a member of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Club, the Pohoqualine Fish Association in Stroudsburg, the Quaker City Farmers, and the Union League.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Driscoll is survived by sons Lee 3d and Patrick, daughters Phoebe Fisher and Py Driscoll, two brothers, and 10 grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Friday at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, 428 S. Main St., North Wales. Burial will be private.