Richard M. Lee was born 70 years ago in a little town in southwestern Oklahoma called Indiahoma.

"It’s on the north fork of the Red River, about 16 miles from Wichita Falls, Texas, on the Oklahoma side of the river," he told the Review.

"The "M" stands for Monroe," he informed. "I was named after an uncle in Oklahoma. I don’t know why my mother picked him. I’ve told people over the years it stood for ‘Macho, Milhous, you name it, if it starts with an ‘m’ I’ve tried it."

His father, Robert Melvin Lee, was in the aircraft industry, and the family stayed on the move during Lee’s younger years.

"I’ve lived a lot of places in my life," he shared. "My dad worked with Boeing and other companies, he was an aircraft electrical engineer. He would have jobs where he had to go and he would be on a project for a certain amount of time, then it was on to the next one. It was the height of the Cold War, and a lot of the projects were top secret. He did some electrical work at White Sands and Area 51. He worked on the plane that Francis Gary Powers was shot down in (Powers was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident). He was also at Berry Field in Nashville for a while during WWII. We moved every seven or eight months. I often wondered what it would be like to have a friend for an entire year. Later, when I moved to Smithville I found out. I’ve had friendships here that have lasted nearly 50 years."

He finally settled in St. Josephs Missouri long enough to graduate from Lafayette High School in 1965. "St Josephs is where Jesse James was killed, and also where the Pony Express started," he said. "It was a big jumping off place for people headed west.

His mother was Anna M. Lee.

"She was from Rochester, Missouri," he said. "My dad met her when he was there on a training mission. He was a captain in the Army Air Corps. The Air Force didn’t become a separate branch until 1947. He could fly, and he did a lot of development work on helicopters back in their early days. They were married, and when he got out of the military, and they went back to Indiahoma, where I was born."

He has one sister, Julia.

"She is in the dental lab business, but she used to do standup comedy," Lee said. "She traveled the Midwest. She never really hit it big, but she made a good living and enjoyed herself."

Lee’s family went to Oklahoma in true pioneer fashion.

"My great grandfather was a lawman in Davidson County Texas," Lee informed. "His family came to Oklahoma in a covered wagon. They didn’t make the big land run, but when Oklahoma became a state in 1907 they opened the southwestern part of the state. It was referred to as the Great Pasture. It was the last land in the state that people were allowed to homestead on. They went in, signed papers, and reached into a barrel and drew the number of their plot. Then you went out and found the stakes marking your land. My great grandfather Lee and my great grandfather Davidson got plots next to each other.

He said his family history in Oklahoma included a few disagreements.

They shared one well," Lee said. "That part of the country is beautiful, but it’s kind of barren. Water was a problem. My great grandfather Davidson had the well on his land, and he would get mad at my great grandfather Lee and tell him he couldn’t use the well. The Lees would go to get barrels of water and he would shoot at them. Not to kill anybody, just to harass. The well was 80 yards from the Lee home, but they would have to make a two-day trip to the river in a wagon, then make a two-day trip back. They slept under the wagon. All because my two great grandfathers couldn’t get along."

Lee met his wife, the former Helen Faye Young, while she was on vacation.

"I met Helen when I was stationed at Tyndall AFB in Panama City Florida," he said. "I worked out on the flight line. I worked 24 hours on, and then I was off for a few days. In my off time I worked on the beach as a photographer, taking souvenir pictures. I had what they called a Class A pass. The only time I had to be in uniform was at my duty station. I had to maintain room on the base, though I had an apartment with a buddy. The base felt like the Taj Mahal. The barracks faced the ocean, and the breeze came right in. Sometimes I wouldn’t go to the base for days, I would just shoot pictures out on the beach. People could buy them or not buy them. I didn’t care, I got paid regardless.

"So I walked up to Helen and her sister, who were there on vacation. She had brought her sister down as a graduation present. It was 1965.

"She told me in no uncertain terms to go away. She said ‘We don’t want to buy anything you’re selling, or anything you’ve got, so why don’t you just go on your merry way?’ She was a lot bigger than me, so I said ‘Yes Ma’am, sorry to interrupt,’ and I moved on. The next day I saw her again, and she walked up to me and said, ‘I wasn’t very polite to you yesterday, how would you like to go out this evening and have some steaks?’ I said ‘Are you serious, lady, after the way you talked to me yesterday?’ She said she was very serious, so I said I’d love to. I went with her, and the rest is history.

"She was teaching at East High School in Nashville at the time. She was five years older and nearly a foot taller than me. I was in love. I was barely 18, I had to get a letter from my mother to give to my commanding officer to get permission to get married."

The Lees have one child, Misty Ross, and two grandchildren, Benjamin and Maggie Felton.

His military career soon led him to some unsavory places.

"One thing I can say about the military, they kept me where it was warm, Lee laughed. "Panama City Florida and Vietnam. Five months after we got married I volunteered to go to Turkey with about ten other guys. I had been married for five whole months, and I was ready for a break. The guys that were single all went to Germany, and the married guys were sent to Vietnam. It was like a big adventure. I was young, and I wanted to see what it was like. I took that back many times in my mind after I got there. These fellas that they are sending overseas, deploying them five or six times, I don’t see how they handle it mentally. We went for one year. I was extended for a little bit because they said they couldn’t replace me. I told my commanding officer that a monkey out of this jungle could replace me for what I was doing. He said I was going to have to stay another 75-80 days.

"When I came home from Vietnam I was offered an early out," he continued. "There was a lot of guys coming home, and they said if I stayed a couple of months they’d let me out early. I said I’d been gone as long as I was staying gone. The next plane that leaves for Kansas City I’m going to be on it. A lot of these guys were taking $3,500-$4,000 to reenlist. You could buy a new GTO for $3,000. They were buying new cars and reenlisting. I wanted to go home. I’d had enough of Vietnam.

"They told me if I reenlisted I could pick a place and they would guarantee in writing that I could stay there for two years. I thought, and then you’ll send me right back to Vietnam. No thanks. I’d seen all of Vietnam I wanted to see. Thank you for the kind offer, but no thank you, I’m going home."

His final months in the Air Force were spent close to his birthplace, but his bride was not taken with the Oklahoma countryside.

"My wife lived with my mother in St. Joseph, Missouri while I was in Vietnam, across the street from where I graduated at Lafayette High School," Lee said. "I had about six months left to do, and I was assigned to Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma, 40 miles from where I was born.

"Helen did not like Oklahoma," Lee admitted. "Oklahoma, compared to Tennessee, is like a desert. It’s just a fact. It’s the land of the big sky. It is amazing. In Oklahoma I could stand or sit, I’m the same height standing or sitting, it doesn’t make any difference, on the tailgate of my old truck and see the two streetlights of the town 30 miles away. It was right in the middle of tornado alley. I was in one once as a kid, and that put the fear in me. Every time it stormed I would get very scared to be perfectly honest about it, and I would go to the storm cellar. Everyone has a storm cellar out there. Helen would not get up. She said ‘If it gets me, it gets me. I’m not going in a storm cellar with a bunch of spiders. I’ll take my chances with a tornado.’ So I’d be in the cellar, and she’d be in bed.

His discharge from the Air Force brought with it some important decisions.

"My uncle was one of the largest cattle ranchers and land owners in Comanche County," he said. "He was getting some years on him, and his boys were off doing other things. He offered me a good deal to be his right-hand man. I considered it, and Helen didn’t say anything other than ‘Do whatever you think is best.’

"I gave it some thought. I was going to be discharged in a couple of weeks, and one evening I went in and told her to get some clothes ready, I was going to Nashville to look for a job. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she said, ‘It’ll be so great to be back where there are trees taller than you are.’ I think she was slamming me a little because of my height. She was tired of the snakes and tarantulas and the desolate country. It has its own rugged beauty, but she was just not cut out for that part of the country.

I liked it, but I was from there. In eastern Oklahoma you have more trees and hills, but in the southwestern corner of Oklahoma you have nothing. I’ve always said that I thought the good Lord dropped it and said ‘I’m not even gonna pick that up.’ I’ve seen guys in bad years take a thing like a flamethrower and burn the spikes off cactus so the cattle could eat it."

The couple soon found themselves on the path to Tennessee.

"I got a job in Nashville with Timco Inc. off Charlotte Avenue," Lee explained. "Helen had about two months left in the school year. She was teaching at a small country school with eleven students in the graduating class, and she didn’t want to leave them high and dry. So she gave notice and finished out the school year, then came home to Tennessee.

"She had been in Nashville for several years before we were married," he continued. "She went to Nashville Business College, and later played AAU basketball. She traveled all over playing basketball. They called her Fabulous Faye Young. There are still a couple of her jerseys in the old gym at Tennessee Tech. One she wore in a tournament where she scored 56 points, more than the other team scored all together. She doesn’t like to take credit for it. She will tell you that it takes an entire team to play basketball, and she didn’t do it by herself. In 1959 they went to the state championship and got beaten by one point in the final seconds of the game. The town of Smithville closed down, and there was like a 15-mile long procession of cars going to that game. Everybody went."

The pair soon returned to DeKalb County.

"We came back to Smithville, and I met McAllen and Sally Foutch," said Lee. "I stayed over there all the time. They were big readers, with a very nice library in their home, and I read a lot, so it was perfect. McAllen could tell you some stories."

Lee decided it was time for a new career.

"I put in to be a bus driver, and I was thinking I would go to college," he informed. "Now, I barely got out of high school. I was basically in high school to have a good time. I had an old 49 ford hot rod, and I loved to chase the girls.

"I told the Foutches what I wanted to do, and Sally said they were starting a new program, veterans preferred. What you would do was teach half a day and go to college half a day. Billy Rhody was superintendent, I went over to his office and filled out the paperwork, and got into the program. There were about seven people from DeKalb County in the program. I finished in three years. I went straight through, and the only time I took off was Christmas. I had to get special permission to carry such heavy class loads. I didn’t think I was going to make it a few times, I got really burned out, but it was the best thing I ever did. My Grandad used to say ‘If you’ve got a job you love, you never work.’ I never dreaded one morning of getting up and going to teach. I always looked forward to going to that classroom. I was a little unorthodox, perhaps, but I had a good time. We had a lot of laughs, but we got the job done."

He then began his 32-year teaching career.

"I started at the old College Street School, and I worked with Mr. Elzie McBride," he said. "Boyd Cantrell was there, Luke Winfree was principal, Woodrow Frazier, Glen Page, and Ernest Ray taught science. When Mr. Ray became principal at Smithville Elementary, he took me with him. My first job on my own was teaching remedial reading there.

"I was so glad when they named the school board building for him. He is very deserving. He ran a tight ship. He not only kept a close watch on students, he kept a close watch on teachers. I’ve been called on the carpet before him a couple of times. I might have kind of got a little chewing. Something that was hard to get used to was that in this part of the country everybody knew what everybody else was doing at all times. It was a change from anywhere I’d been. He would tell me my car was seen at such-and-such a place, and he had gotten a phone call about it. It used to burn me up. I thought that was my time. But everybody in town knew what you were doing. He knew that."

Lee said he fell in love with Smithville from the get-go.

"I love Smithville. When I came here for the first time in 1966 to meet Helen’s parents I told her I would live here someday. It was the neatest little town I had ever seen. I think we take Smithville for granted. We have a very neat, quiet town, The square is not boarded up, and abandoned like some places. It may not be what it used to be, but some of the finest people I’ve ever met in my life are in this town."

He said the problem of making lasting friends was solved when he came here.

"There aren’t words to express how I feel about some of the friends I’ve made," Lee shared. "M.B. Silcox, who lives right up the road from me, has been a much better friend than I deserve. In the summers they didn’t pay teachers. M.B. was building houses, and he asked me what I knew about construction. I said I knew absolutely nothing. He told me to come on out, they’d put me to work doing something. If it hadn’t been for him I wouldn’t have had a home. I couldn’t have made my house payment. My mother was sick for about four years, and I got calls a few times to go to Missouri. She passed away in 1982. You try to get a $500 check cashed in this town at ten o’clock at night in the early 80s. It wasn’t going to happen. Everybody was at home in bed. I always had a little money. Not a lot. I was a schoolteacher. I could have gotten up there and back. I would stop by his house and he would have a cup of coffee made, and he would tell me to sit down and calm down. He would hand me money, and I would tell him I was okay. He’d say ‘You never know what’s gonna happen on that highway. If the transmission falls out of that car, you’re there. Prepare yourself for the worst. When you get everything taken care of give it back to me.’ I tried to write him a check once, and he said ‘I gave it to you green, and I want it back green. Put it in your pocket and get on the road.’

"Bebo Robinson has been a good friend as well. My mom was flying in once in the 70s, and I wanted to take her to Opryland. I was running a little bit low on cash, so I called Bebo and asked him if he could hold a check for a few days. He said ‘I aint taking a check from you, you little rascal, how much do you need? Just don’t forget where you got it.’

Lee said that he feels he has led a charmed life.

"Healthwise I’ve had a few problems, but I feel very fortunate," he said. "I’m the luckiest man in the world. If I was leaving advice, I would say be kind. Be nice to your fellow man. You haven’t walked in his shoes, and you don’t know what he’s been through. He doesn’t know what I’ve been through. If you have an opportunity to help somebody, help them. I realize there’s some people you can’t help, but you can try. Like I tell my grandson, always stand up for what you believe in, treat everybody like you want to be treated, and when you can help others, do it."

Lee said the bottom line is to have a good time.

"No matter what I’ve done all my life, I’ve had a good time doing it," he said. "I’ve been a lucky, lucky man. I’ve had a lot of fun. If it all stops tomorrow, I’ve had my share."