After living in various rural Texas railroad construction camps, he attended Dallas High School (Dallas, TX) and Main Avenue High School (San Antonio, TX) where he excelled as a musician and as a star in football and basketball.
Throughout the Great Depression and most of WW2, Patton's teams in Princeton, West Virginia dominated the state in football and basketball.
Lee Patton is also credited with launching WVU's Golden Age of Basketball, with such WVU Sports Hall of Fame players as Leland Byrd, Clyde Green, Bobby Carroll, Fred Schaus, Eddie Beach, Jim Walthall, and Mark Workman.
Lee Patton was in his prime, just 45 years of age when he died at home in Morgantown on March 8,1950.
He was taken by a stroke, the result of injuries sustained in a car crash that occurred while travelling to play Penn State on Valentines Day.