Before that — while working as a computer programmer at various companies, including Dayton Power and Light and GE — he was playing basketball in various adult leagues and often he and his teammates took issue with the quality of officiating they had at their games.
“I wanted to make things fairer for everybody, so I signed up for a referee class that Phil Durkee taught at Dayton Christian,” he said. “Phil had us work on some of the mechanics, but then he just threw us into the fire.
“My first assignment was a scrimmage at Chaminade Julienne when they played a Dayton Public Schools team. We had no clue where to stand on the court; how to administer a free throw or, a throw in.
“Phil hadn’t talked about any of that!”
And getting teed-up?
“I’ll never forget this little old lady coming over and saying, we were terrible,” he laughed. “She said we were horrible.
“And I was like, ‘She is right!’”
In the near 30 years since, Leggs’ reviews have gotten far better:
He’s been one of the busiest referees in the area.
He’s become one of the most respected.
And for the past dozen years or so, he’s been sought out by young referees who are just starting their careers and want his expertise and guidance.
During his career, Leggs has officiated at the high school and college level, including junior colleges, the NAIA, and NCAA Division I, II and III games.
At one time he was officiating games in numerous Division I conferences, including the Big East, ACC, Atlantic 10, Conference USA, Mid-American, Horizon League and American East.
He officiated the NAIA Division II women’s national championship game in 2007 and at both the NCAA Division III women’s Elite Eight in 2016 and at the Division III women’s Final Four in 2012.
He was president of the Miami Valley Officials Association in 2003-04 and recently some of his students refereed Ohio high school state championship games.
On April 20 at the Hilton Polaris in Columbus, the 67-year-old Leggs will be enshrined in the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame, along with 11 other individuals and the 1976 Class AAA state champion Barberton High team.
His induction class includes Kirk Martin, who coached the Southeastern High School girls team to a state title in 1996 and then led the Cedarville University women to a National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) title in 2008 and two NAIA national runners-up finishes.
Another enshrine will be Bev Obringer, who starred at Marion Local High School before becoming a hoops legend at the University of Cincinnati in the late 1980s. She’s the greatest shot blocker in the history of the Bearcats women’s program and is the No. 2 all-time rebounder and No. 5 career scorer.
“When I got the call, I started crying,” Leggs admitted quietly. “I was overwhelmed.
“I looked at some of the other people going in with me — Craig Ehlo from the Cleveland Cavaliers and Tyrone Hill, who played at Xavier and in the NBA (and before that Withrow High) — and I thought I didn’t belong in this group.
“I refereed just because I loved the game. I never expected to get any recognition for it. Usually, you just want to referee a game and get out without being noticed. That means you did a good hob.
“When people focus on you, it likely means you didn’t do a good job.”
An old lady taught him that lesson long ago.
‘Oh my goodness’
As we spoke the other day in his West Carrollton home, Thurman was joined on the couch by Charlene, his wife of 42 years. She recently retired after a long career as an educator who taught at Lincoln, Belle Haven and Wogaman in the Dayton Public Schools system, as well as at West Carrollton and Miamisburg and other places.
As Thurman started telling how he was the son of Mississippi sharecroppers; how he and his wife both grew up in Chicago; and how they met when he was working at the Square Deal plumbing store there, she interrupted him.
“I can tell this story better,” Charlene said with a laugh. “He’ll try to make himself look good.
“I was being raised by my grandmother. We needed a new toilet, but we didn’t have a male around. At the plumbing store, the owner told my grandmother, ‘I got a guy who can do it.’
“(Thurman) came to our house to put the toilet in, but he kept leaving things and then coming back to our place for them.
“Finally, he tells my grandmother, ‘You have a nice looking daughter.’
“Well, I didn’t want to be sitting there all the time like I didn’t have anything going on, so one Sunday when he came back, I just left.
“He left his card and his phone number and said for me to call him if anything else was leakin’.
“Boy, he was playin it!”
Thurman shook his head and said quietly, “Oh my goodness!”
He said their first date was to a women’s pro basketball game — the Chicago Hustle who played in the Women’s Professional Basketball League.
They married and have one son, Nathan, who — once the family relocated to the Miami Valley after Thurman was recruited by Dayton Power & Light — played football at West Carrollton High School.
Nathan later joined the U.S, Marines and did multiple tours in Afghanistan.
“We just prayed to God to bring him home safe,” Thurman said.
Today, Nathan lives in Daytona Beach, Fla. He’s a school teacher and for a long time coached football at Mainland High School.
In his heyday as a ref, Thurman said he was working at least 80 games a season: “I can remember there were times I had games 28 of the 31 days in January.”
He has stories of driving across the Midwest, flying elsewhere and, at times, having two games in one day.
He recounted a story from 2006 when he officiated a 1 p.m game at Saginaw Valley State, an NCAA Division II school 100 miles northwest of Detroit, and then rushed back to Cincinnati — some 336 miles – for a 7p.m. game at U.S. Bank Arena featuring Queen City phenom O.J. Mayo and his North College Hill team against national power Oak Hill Academy.
That game, he said, drew a crowd of 11,000.
He talked of other athletes who impressed him in games he worked, including: Tamika Williams when she was at Chaminade Julienne before her glory days at UConn and in the WNBA; Chris Wright, when he was a high-flying star at Trotwood Madison before he soared even higher as a Hall of Fame player at the University of Dayton; and Notre Dame’s Skylar Diggins, who has gone from Indiana’s Miss Basketball to the two-time Big East Player of the Year and now has been a six-time WNBA All Star.
“I just love the game so much and everything about it,” Thurman said.
‘Refereeing probably saved your life’
“When I first started this, I said, ‘Lord, if I can just referee until I’m 60 years old, I’ll consider myself blessed,’” he said. “But when I got to 60, I said, ‘Lord, if I could just ref until I’m 65.’
“And when I reached 65, I still felt pretty good — I was able to get up and down the court with the kids and I was still sharp with the rules — so I thought, ‘Man, maybe I can keep going. Maybe I can referee until I’m 70!’”
Then last April, while hoping for a little more heavenly help, he got hit by a dose of devilish reality.
“I had some chest pain and thought it was indigestion,” he said. “I’d never really had any health issues, so I stopped to pick up some antacid tablets and ate them and went on to work.”
He and his wife now own and manage rental properties.
“The next day I got ready to cut the grass and something didn’t seem right,” he said. “I called the doctor, but they couldn’t get me in, so I got ready to do some mowing. That’s when the nurse called back and said my doctor thought I should go get checked out.
“I went to Kettering Health/ Sycamore and they rushed me to the ER and did some tests.
“When they came back out, they said, ‘How do you feel?’
“I said, ‘I feel great.’
“They said, ‘Well, you had a major heart attack yesterday!’
“I had surgery the next day and afterward the doctor said the shape I was in helped me.
“He said, ‘Refereeing probably saved your life.’”
He now does cardiac rehab three times a week. This basketball season he cut out all his college games, but still officiated some 30 boys high school games in the area.
He also still instructs referees who are getting into the profession.
Charlene said during the hoops season he’s at a game almost every night or afternoon of the week. He’s either assessing his students and other young referees who ask him for honest critiques of their work or, come tournament time, he’s evaluating officials for the Ohio High School Athletic Association.
Not long ago he was headed into Trent Arena to watch a Troy Christian game when some people from another car walked up, recognized him and asked if he was officiating that game.
“I said, ‘Naah, you’re lucky. I’m just watching today,” he recalled.
“But they said, ‘No, we wish you were. You used to referee some of our daughter’s games in college. You did a great job.’”
So, it seems like that “terrible” assessment from so long ago no longer fits Thurman Leggs’ efforts.
Then again, maybe it does.
“When I worked college games, I wasn’t allowed to take part in any office pools or anything like that during March Madness,” he said. “You can’t bet on basketball games or anything like that. They do background checks.
“But this year, for the first time since I started refereeing, I was able to get into a March Madness basketball pool.
“In fact, I run it at the cardiac center and everybody there is loving it. We get to talking about how our picks are doing and we stop working out! We’re having a lot of fun with it.”
So how’s he doing?
He shook his head:
“Not good. I’ve only got one team left — just Purdue.
“I missed a lot of them.”
That’s just what the old lady told him so long ago.
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