WEST – Dr. Olin L., age 83, died peacefully on October 31, 2022 in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the Hospice of the Piedmont, his wife and two sons by his side.
A true, do anything for you friend, Olin was a tower of kindness and support to all who knew him, and a warrior throughout his life, even in the last difficult years of illness and disability.
Olin began his remarkable life in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on August 19, 1939, the eldest of five children born to Olin Leslie West and Bertha Courtney West.
Greatly admired as an athlete in his youth, he might have chosen a pro career were it not for a terrible series of patella tendon injuries. At the Haverford School in Philadelphia, where he was given the award of best all-around athlete, he’d lettered in both baseball and basketball, and was later to receive the Maxwell Club Award as the most outstanding football player in the Inter-Academic league. Olin’s strength, speed, and ability to shed blockers and to tackle made him a strong recruit for college football, and though he was offered a full scholarship at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University Of Delaware, he chose Princeton University.
Unfortunately, after repeated starts on both the football and baseball fields, and repeated surgeries with long recoveries in hip-to-ankle casts, he was clipped from behind while defending an off tackle play and was carried off the field with torn ligaments of the left knee. His season was over.
It was a win, however, for the field of medicine. Board certified in Psychiatry and Neurology from Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, Olin had what it took of course, but it was his natural warmth and empathy that made him the best of shrinks, always going above and beyond for his patients. Early in his career, before opening a private practice, his primary work involved team development in both hospital and community settings. Specializing in group therapies and the creation of Day Hospital Programs (he was part of the highly regarded Day Hospital in the basement of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine), he was elected Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association for his work in the 1970s developing housing options for indigent, mentally ill people in New York City.
Olin, or the big O as he was often called, was a powerful and courageous man. One incident that comes to mind took place on an extended family vacation at a dude ranch in Wyoming. The large group was being led by one of the wranglers on a pleasantly ambling trail ride when the horse carrying his younger son got spooked and tore off. Instantly Olin was galloping after them, ahead of the wrangler, just like in a western. Another dramatic rescue occurred when his beloved boxer fell into the middle of the family’s icy pond. Olin miraculously heard her calls and dragged the nearby rowboat onto the ice. Standing in the boat as in a gondola, he used an oar to repeatedly push off the ice to where his dog, too barrel-chested to pull herself out, would have drowned.
The strong do what they have to do. And Olin was never cowed by what people thought of him. One time he’d driven one of his boys to an outdoor tennis tournament, and getting out of the car had spilled an entirely full Gatorade onto his lap. Chilly outside, he’d looked for a change of clothes in the club’s ‘lost and found’ and then appeared court-side squeezed into a pair of hot pink yoga pants.
A longtime tenor banjo player who loved New Orleans Dixieland, Olin gained professional experience in the 1970s playing in two Greenwich Village jazz bars, Your Father’s Mustache and The Red Garter. He continued to play throughout most of his life, appearing in local venues with the groups the Jazz Rascals and the Shenandoah Swingers.
All manner of fishing thrilled him– on a lake, out at sea, in a crystal clear trout stream. He played a formidable game of tennis with a power serve. He loved basketball and action movies, and in another life would have liked to have been an FBI man like his brother. He loved animals, rescuing a dog while in medical school who’d been used for testing and was scheduled to be euthanized. Most of all he loved his family.
Olin is survived by his wife of 40 years, Katherine Kane, and their two sons Jonah Kane-West (Sazshy Valentine and granddaughter Sally) and Daniel Kane-West (Britni Sweet); his sister, Rosalind Harper and her children, Scott (Le and children Avery and Bryce) and Courtney McCormick (Scott and children Connor, Rosalind and Margaret); his brothers, Ronald West (Bronwyn) and Courtney West and his children, Hillary Strengholt (Phillip and children Mary West and Reid), Courtney (Cailin and children Margot, Judson and Courtney), and Leslie West Falkoff (Adam). Also surviving him is his nephew, Lee Underwood (Christine and children Kalani and Kaia), son of Olin’s beloved deceased sister Leslie.
A private celebration of Olin’s life will be held on December 10, 2022 at Waterperry Farm, his home in Free Union, Virginia. Gifts in Olin’s name may be made to The International Rescue Committee, 375 Greenbrier Drive, Suite 200, Charlottesville, VA 22901.