Before Richard Lerblance wore a judicial robe or took an oath in the Oklahoma Senate, he answered fire calls and helped govern the schools and streets of Hartshorne. Lerblance, an attorney whose public service stretched from that southeastern Oklahoma community to the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court, died at his home in McAlester on July 25, 2026. He was 80.

Service was not a late career turn for Lerblance. It was the line connecting the different parts of his life. He sat on the Hartshorne City Council and Board of Education, and he spent more than 30 years as a volunteer firefighter before retiring as the department's chief. The family's notice on Legacy also described him as an Eagle Scout, a 32nd Degree Mason, a Rotary and Elks member, and a singer in the choir at McAlester First United Methodist Church.

Richard Charles Lerblance was born in Oklahoma City on March 9, 1946, to Dr. W. P. and Alyce Knight Lerblance. He grew up in Hartshorne, graduated from its high school in 1964, and spent time in Raton, New Mexico, training horses for the family racehorse business. His education carried him through Eastern Oklahoma State College, Central State University, and Oklahoma City University School of Law. After earning his law degree in 1978, he returned to Hartshorne and built a practice that handled matters ranging from oil and gas and Social Security to criminal and family law.

That homeward decision shaped nearly everything that followed. Lerblance could move among a law office, a fire station, a school board meeting, and cattlemen's associations without leaving behind the region that had formed him. His public roles grew in scale, but they remained tied to southeastern Oklahoma and to institutions where decisions landed close to home.

His longest public chapter unfolded in the Muscogee Nation judiciary. According to the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court, he served on the court from 1990 to 2002 and returned in 2012. Across those periods he repeatedly held its senior administrative posts, including five separate years as chief justice before a four-year stretch from 2020 through 2023. In January 2020, his fellow justices chose him unanimously to lead the court for the coming year.

Between those two stretches on the tribal court, Lerblance entered state politics. He won an Oklahoma House seat in 2002, then captured a special election for Senate District 7 the next year. The Oklahoma Senate recorded that the State Election Board certified his victory on June 13, 2003, and that District Judge Steven Taylor administered his oath three days later. Lerblance represented the district until term limits ended his tenure in 2012. His committee work covered education, energy and the environment, the judiciary, appropriations, and public safety, subjects that echoed the professions and communities he already knew.

Outside those formal roles, the family remembered a man drawn to horses, cattle, travel, church music, and the water. He kept a cruiser and a houseboat, using the latter as a gathering place where he cooked pancakes on deck for his grandchildren and their friends. The detail belonged to the same life as the court opinions and Senate votes: Lerblance built places where people could gather, whether the setting was a public institution or a lake.

He was survived by Frances, his wife of more than 50 years; their sons David and Rich; three grandchildren; a great-grandson; and his sister, Karen Beare. His son John and his brother William Penn Lerblance III died before him.

Lerblance's work continued in the Hartshorne institutions he served, in the state district he represented, and in the body of Muscogee law shaped during his years on the Nation's highest court. The fire chief's helmet, the legislator's oath, and the justice's robe marked different duties, but for him they all began with the same decision to return home and serve.