Interviewed in "Growing Up on the Set: Interviews with 39 Former Child Actors of Classic Film and Television" by Tom Goldrup and Jim Goldrup (McFarland, 2002).
After leaving Hollywood he worked as a carpenter for two decades and taught skiing to underprivileged children and people with disabilities at Mammoth Mountain in California.
He was the son of Dorothe Dean (Baker) and Deforrest Leroy Aaker. His mother owned a dancing school. His paternal grandfather was a Norwegian immigrant, while his mother was born in Michigan, to English immigrants.
He and his brother had a song-and-dance act when he was a young child.
He said after giving up acting he spent the rest of the 1960s travelling the world as a "flower child".
When Lee Aker passed away, Paul Peterson in his advocacy for child actors, contacted the veterans Administration to enable a burial for lee in a veterans cemetery.