Was tested for the top boy role in the classic movie Shane (1953) and
promised the part, but lost it a few days later to the late Brandon De Wilde.
Profiled in the 2016 book "X Child Stars: Where Are They Now?" by Kathy Garver and Fred Ascher.
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 and his brother had a song-and-dance act when he was a young child.
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 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.