Judge Lee R. West is an unlikely Oklahoma legend. For at least the last two decades, he objected to the label "legend," on the ground it was reserved for the dead or very nearly dead.

On April 24, 2020, to the grief of the multitude who loved and admired him, his objection was finally overruled. He passed peacefully in Muskogee, surrounded by loved ones.

Lee Roy West was born in Clayton on Nov. 26, 1929, the cusp of the Great Depression. He was the youngest of four children in a family he called "too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash."

His father, Calvin West, was an itinerant horse trader and bootlegger who could neither read nor write. His mother, Nicie Hill West, supported the family on the $21 per month she earned from the WPA. When things got especially tight, she swallowed her pride and stood with a very young Lee in the commodities line. They were all but penniless, and they were not alone.

Watching good people break their backs and their hearts to feed their children filled Lee with a passion for justice and a commitment to the underdog that never waned.

Lee credited Oklahoma with most of the good things in his life. He declared that despite having to dodge tornadoes, brush fires and earthquakes in 110-degree heat, there was no place he would rather live.

Oklahoma gave him friends and neighbors who looked out for him. It gave him teachers who made him love learning in general and books in particular.

Most importantly, it gave him the opportunity, way back in second grade, to glimpse the most beautiful girl in the world the love of his life Mary Ann Ellis; he would do everything in his power to marry her one day. Upon his graduation from Antlers High School in 1948, Lee hitchhiked to Norman and found jobs washing dishes to pay the tuition at his beloved University of Oklahoma. He moved into a dorm room that became his first home with electricity and indoor plumbing. Lee was brilliant and studious, and he seemed to remember every fact he ever encountered, but he was also a master storyteller and the funniest character most of his fellow students had ever met.

He could be brash, irreverent and borderline inappropriate. He liked to compare the pompous and powerful to "the tallest building in Antlers, Oklahoma," but he never, ever punched down.

The target of his humor was mostly himself. He learned there was an advantage in allowing people to underestimate him. They rarely did that twice.

Lee lived by the motto "If it's not fun, it's not worth doing." And he found fun in almost everything: the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as a lieutenant in Korea during the Korean conflict; law school at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he was named the outstanding graduate of his class and where he later taught classes himself; Harvard Law School, where he won a Ford Foundation fellowship in the teaching of law; private law practice; the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board, where he served as chairman; the Oklahoma state courts, where he served as district judge; and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, where he served as district judge for nearly 40 years after his appointment by President Jimmy Carter.

His energy and attention were not confined to his professional pursuits. In 1952, he finally won the hand of Mary Ann, with whom he remained no less besotted than he was in second grade. They celebrated 63 years of marriage and brought up two cherished daughters, Kim and Jennifer.

He insisted that a full and balanced life also required hobbies, and his hobbies sometimes bordered on obsessions. He was a voracious reader, an avid OU football fan, a breeder and trainer of champion quarter horses and an internationally renowned breeder, trainer and handler of champion field trial bird dogs. Many of his happiest days were spent astride a horse, chasing bird dogs through the frost. He swore there is no greater therapist than a warm puppy.

Although his accomplishments, awards and honors are too numerous to catalog, he was, perhaps, most proud of his 2012 induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and his 2004 induction into the Field Trial Hall of Fame in Grand Junction, Tennessee. And he was humbled when his dear friends Bob Burke and Judge David L. Russell penned his popular biography, "Law and Laughter," a book that documents his hardscrabble beginnings and remarkable life that took him from a dirt-floor cabin to dinners at the White House - where he would arrive in his pickup truck with bird dog boxes in the bed. Lee called it the kind of book that, if you put it down, you could not pick it back up again.

But the awards, honors and acclaim are not what defined Lee West. What made him legendary was his extraordinary interest in and regard for people. He had a rare gift for unearthing the best in all kinds of people.

In the nearly half a century he served as a trial judge, he refused to reduce any defendant who appeared before him to the worst thing he or she had ever done. He frequently received letters from inmates he had sentenced to lengthy prison terms, thanking him for his fairness and his respect.

He was an advocate for those who had served their time. He believed in second chances.

That same gift allowed Lee to cultivate deep and abiding friendships. Those of us blessed to be his friend found in him a tireless, if sometimes irascible, champion. He coaxed and challenged us into realizing potential he insisted was there, whether we - or anyone else - could perceive it. We who, with his encouragement and his example, accomplished things we never dreamed possible remain deeply in his debt.

At his induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Judge Lee West reminisced about the country folk who would express their most profound appreciation with the phrase, "I'm much obliged."

An enormous circle of family, friends, judges, lawyers, ex-convicts and bird dog enthusiasts are "much obliged" to Lee West, the small-town Oklahoma boy who squeezed every last drop of joy and laughter from the life and the people he loved.

He is survived by his daughter, Kimberly Ellis West, and her husband, Greg Saunders, of Muskogee; daughter, Jennifer West of Tulsa; granddaughter, Mary Ellis Passey; niece, Sandra Mantooth of Ada; and nephew, Topper Johnston of Sonoma, California.

He was predeceased by his wife, Mary Ann, and two infant sons.

Lee's family is "much obliged" to his long-suffering and loyal law clerks, Cindy (Cinderella) Smith and Jacqueline Stone.

He was lovingly cared for by Bambi and Tony Nail, Robyn Crandall, Barbara White, Erica White, Colleen O'Reilly and Amber Michell, who became a large part of the family. Also deserving of thanks are Epworth Villa of Oklahoma City and The Springs of Muskogee.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the University of Oklahoma Foundation and the University of Oklahoma Law School (Deans Fund) with directions to use the donation toward financial aid to enable low-income students to obtain the kind of education that changed Lee's life.

A memorial service to celebrate Lee West's life will be held at a later date, when we can all be together.