ALLEN DALE “OLE” OLSON (Army vet)

The life of Army veteran Dr. Allen Dale Olson cannot be pigeonholed into one profession, one location, one accomplishment, one dream. “Most soldiers and federal employees don’t get the experiences that we had,” Ole said of his decades of educational stewardship for Dependents Schools in Europe. His two years in the Army (1954-56) set him on a path to serve his country, to serve military families, and to serve Dependents children in Department of Defense (DoD) schools around the globe.

HIS ARMY EXPERIENCE: Olson (“Ole” to his friends, pronounced oh-lee) was raised in Portage, Indiana, and like most Hoosiers, played high school basketball, learned how to work hard, and turned friends into family easily. He worked as a steel worker while going to college. He’d already earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education from nearby Valparaiso University and had been teaching in Michigan and Indiana before he was drafted.

“That was the beginning of a lifetime of being in and working for the Army,” he told me recently in his home, surrounded by beautiful artwork that his wife Joan painted to chronicle their international adventures. What he didn’t know when he was on active duty is that he would spend most of his professional life serving children of military families all around the world, and that he’d spend much of his retirement years sharing the stories of military families via the Museum of the American Military Family and Learning Center that he and his family would create.

“Ole” did basic training at Camp Chaffee in Arkansas. His next stop was Wurzburg, Germany, where he first got exposed to Dependents Schools. The high school and college trombone player was ordered to try out for the First Infantry Band; that’s what he did in the Army. After the division moved to Fort Riley, Kansas, he separated from the Army as a Spec 4.

HIS TEACHING EXPERIENCE: He went right back to his hometown to teach and coach high school basketball. He met Joan there and they married. Soon after he took the first leap into teaching in USAF Dependents Schools abroad, in Izmir, Turkey. He had seen an ad in a Chicago newspaper, went for an interview, was accepted, and got the job. While he worked for USAF schools, Joan either taught there too or in a nearby missionary school. After Izmir, they went to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, then to the USAF school at the Toul-Roseries in eastern France, where they both worked as civilian teachers and Ole went into administration. “I had to take back a lot of the things I said about principals,” the former teacher admitted, laughing. Then they went to the Dreux School at the USAF Air Base in Normandy, France. Their daughter, Circe, who continues to be the driving force in the Museum of the Military Family and Learning Center, was born there. They started the museum in 2011.

They did that work from 1957 to1989, excluding three years when he was publications director for the National Education Association in Washington, D.C. This is where he had perhaps his first personal experience with a prominent public figure. They attended the St. John’s Church on Lafayette Square. One Sunday morning when then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson was there, he held Ole’s crying infant daughter in his arms until she quieted after a service. This upset the Secret Service’s best efforts to escort LBJ quietly and quickly out of the church.

He earned his master’s degree in secondary administration from George Washington University (GWU) while living in Washington. He started working on his PhD at GWU soon after, finishing in 1972 while in Heidelberg. His thesis, the History of The United States Defense Department Schools, became the basis for the general audience book that Ole published in 1989, From DDS to DODDS.

They returned to Europe in 1967 after Ole’s former USAF schools boss recruited Ole to become an executive officer in the newly organized Army school system in Europe. At that time, the Army responsibility for Dependents Schools covered sub-Saharan Africa, through Europe, all the way up to the Arctic Circle. This was the year the DoD schools were divided worldwide into three regions – Europe to the Army, the Pacific Theater to the Air Force, and the Atlantic islands to the Navy. Ole and Joan spent the next 22 years in Europe, mostly in Germany, as Ole served as the liaison between the schools and the Army Headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. His main duties included constant contact with the military command at each location, with teachers’ unions, and parents’ organizations. He handled the press corps and attended major educational conferences in the US and Europe. In 1979, Ole became an Army employee, reporting directly to the U.S. Army Europe Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. His liaison responsibilities expanded. “I am now the sole survivor of the group that reorganized the Army school system,” Ole reflected. He remains a member of the American Overseas Schools Historical Society.

HIS CONNOISSEUR EXPERIENCE: It was here that Ole and Joan engrossed themselves in the local culture, cuisine, and wine regions that bordered Germany and France. They hosted great French chefs and European dignitaries in their home. As their knowledge and reputation grew, the Army entrusted the couple to host visitors from Congress, military brass, and visiting educators.

“Nearly half a century ago back in Indiana, my father began teaching me that life is more fun when you know a little bit about wherever you are, creating in me a curious nature still far from sated. I am grateful to him,” Ole wrote in the Foreword to Another Stroll, one of the books that he and Joan wrote and illustrated during this period.

“Joan got interested in French cooking and became a student at École de Cuisine La Varennes, one of the first professional cooking schools in Paris to teach in English as well French. She met some of the greatest chefs and wine producers of Europe. We still correspond with some of the vintners. Joan wrote menu cheat sheets for USAREUR staff traveling into eastern Europe. I wrote a column based on what we were doing in Europe, for a newspaper back home in Indiana,” Ole recalled. After leaving the Army liaison position, he worked for four years in an 1800’s chateau as Dean of the Graduate School of Schiller International University based in Strasbourg, France. In 1993 they returned to Indiana. “If I hadn’t been drafted and sent to Germany, I would have never learned about DoD schools overseas or about the food, the wine, the culture, the region,” Ole concluded.