Law & Laughter: The Life of Lee West

by Bob Burke

Book by Bob Burke This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1885596286
• ISBN13: 9781885596284
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Oklahoma Heritage Association
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Law and Laughter: The Life of Lee West

Lee West loves the law and the federal judiciary; his wife, Mary Ann, and his two daughters; quail hunting; and his hunting dogs. Not necessarily in that particular order. Lee West likes the cowboy poet Baxter Black; Wilma (Coffman) House; telling good jokes and stories; and needling circuit court judges about their willingness to reverse his district court decisions. Not necessarily in that order. It goes without saying that many of us are fond of Lee West. Perhaps that fondness can best be illustrated by the forward written by former United States Senator and Oklahoma Governor, Henry Bellmon. For all the accolades and honors rightly directed at Henry Bellmon for his many years of public service to Oklahoma, he counts as among his noted accomplishments the original appointment of Lee West to the Oklahoma state judiciary in 1965. Governor Bellmon goes so far as to say of Lee West that "he might have been just the kind of judge our framers, many of whom were also quail hunters, had in mind when they created the Third Branch of government." But then Governor Bellmon also describes Lee West as "an outstanding lawyer, who despite his Reba McEntire accent, or Little Dixie diphthongs, possessed a Master of Laws degree from Harvard University." Governor Bellmon's forward only gives the reader a taste of what is to come. Bob Burke and David L. Russell, one of Lee West's colleagues on the U.S. District Court sitting in Oklahoma City, have authored the kind of book that works as medicine for anyone needing a boost in life. It's a book that works because -- well, Lee West is truly that special character so beloved by so many. This is not a book for the curmudgeonly. Law and Laughter is all about Lee West. But that's the easy part of this review. After all, a biography should be about the subject of the biography. Burke and Russell are telling the reader as much as they can about Lee West. We learn about his family heritage and his ties to Oklahoma's "Little Dixie"; his birth in Clayton, Oklahoma, during the depths of the Great Depression, and his youth in Antlers, Oklahoma. We learn how Lee West loved the United States Marine Corps. We learn of Lee West's many years of public service with the Oklahoma state judiciary, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the federal district court. We learn how he enjoyed teaching at Harvard Law School and the University of Oklahoma College of Law. We also learn how the law could have been the real loser. It turns out that Lee West has a successful record as a football coach. How much poorer we all might have been if he had stayed with football. This is also a man who attended a state dinner hosted by President and Mrs. Gerald Ford arriving at the White House gates in a "1972 green and white Dodge clubcab pickup with an Oklahoma license plate." A pickup complete with dog boxes in the back bed. A man who admits to developing an empathy for the criminal and downtrodden from poetry read to him at any early age