Lee would go on to set up a student hostel programme and guest house, hoping to provide inexpensive accommodation for international students from other parts of Africa. He also invested in a variety of other projects, including a farm and a driving range. He retired from his dental practice in 2002. In 2007, he donated photographs of Kwame Nkrumah that he had taken in his days at Lincoln University to the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum in preparation for the country's Golden Jubilee celebrating the 50th anniversary of independence. In his aging years, he continued to pay attention to developments in the United States, in particular Barack Obama's presidential campaign and subsequent election in 2008. During Obama's presidential visit to Ghana in 2009, he stated that he was happy to see that the United States was making progress, but felt that "Ghana had made progress long before the United States". The University of Ghana-Legon awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2008 to recognise his distinguished contribution to public service, making him the second American to whom they had granted such a degree, after W. E. B. Du Bois.