Lee Meade spent life in sports and on the move challenges.

Since his youthful days as a track star in Litchfield, Minn., Lee Meade was never one to stand still or flinch at the sight of a hurdle.

An executive or owner in five now-defunct sports leagues, a writer and editor for 10 newspapers, a public relations guru, soldier and amateur genealogist, Meade was many things in life.

But, friends and family said, there was one thing that Meade never was: complacent. "He just kept moving," said his wife, Helen Meade. "He loved new challenges. He loved to be innovative."

Meade, 82, died Dec. 29 of complications from diabetes.

Before he settled into retirement in Chaska, Meade held dozens of jobs and moved almost 50 times. His newspaper career included stops in California, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas, with a stint as sports editor of the Denver Post.

He left journalism for a spell in the late 1960s to work for the American Basketball Association as public relations director for his boyhood idol, then-league Commissioner and former Minneapolis Laker George Mikan. After leaving that front office gig, he worked as assistant general manager for the league's Dallas Chaparrals, a squad that later became the San Antonio Spurs and joined the National Basketball Association.

Meade also worked as the first public relations director for the World Hockey Association, was part owner of the Minnesota Buckskins -- a World Team Tennis squad -- and served as general manager for the Munich Eagles of the International Basketball Association.

He wrapped up his career in professional sports with the Las Vegas Posse, part of the failed expansion of the Canadian Football League into the United States.

"He's Don Quixote out chasing windmills," former Monarchs coach and colleague Walt Weaver told Sports Illustrated in 1990. "He has picked the fledgling, no-one-can-do-this sports to become involved with."

When Meade's son, Matt, of Austin, Texas, tells people about all the places he lived as a child, they invariably ask if he was an Army brat. "No, professional sports brat," he says with pride.

Lee Meade crisscrossed the country and globe, but in the week before his death, he yearned to make one last trip back to Litchfield, where his newspaper career and fascination with sports began.

His family decided he wasn't well enough to travel, so a few of Meade's high school buddies, including former Litchfield Mayor Vern Madson, made a day trip to visit him in hospice care and reminisce about the old days. Meade died several hours after the old gang left.