Eric Christopher Olson, 30 November 1948 – 11 August 2023

Eric Christopher Olson, 74, passed away at home on August 11, 2023. Born in Oakland, California on November 30, 1948 to Oscar Olson and Ruby Gann Olson, he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area with his sister Sandra and surrounded by dozens of neighborhood friends. He could identify cars by make and model not long after he learned to talk, was a Howdy Doody fan, loved his mother dearly, and traveled with his father to visit family in Sweden when he was sixteen. After high school graduation, he joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1967 to serve as an aviation life support technician for an A4 Skyhawk Squadron assigned to Naval Air Station Alameda for six years. Throughout his life he enjoyed sharing stories of temporary duty assignments to Puerto Rico, Mississippi, Tennessee and Nevada.

On April 1, 1968 he met the love of his life, Judy Ann Payne, in a criminal justice class at Chabot College and, proving their mutual attraction was not an April fool’s joke, they were married on October 9, 1971. Together they joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on March 31, 1973 to establish a unified gospel-oriented foundation upon which to build their family. Eric began a career in public safety working as an emergency medical technician and for Hayward Police Department as a crime scene evidence technician, jailer, and dispatcher. To make ends meet and support his growing family, Eric also worked part-time as a limousine driver and janitor. In 1985 he completed a bachelor’s degree in political science from Cal State Hayward, which he later applied as a substitute teacher at Sonora High School and other Tuolumne County schools. Eric additionally spent time as a reserve Police Officer in Hayward and a volunteer firefighter in Dublin before being selected by San Ramon Valley Fire Department as the first dispatcher for their new emergency call center in 1988.

Eric earned his private-pilot license at Livermore Airport and had passion for military history, military aviation, story-telling, and backyard agriculture. He cultivated a garden, multiple fruit trees, and several chickens at the family’s home in suburban Dublin. After moving to a larger property in Sonora, Eric and Judy established and nurtured a quarter-acre garden, built a small barn where they taught their children to raise goats, sheep, and pigs and expanded their chicken flock to include a rooster, over a dozen hens, and one duck all while still making the two-hour commute to San Ramon every other day. In his spare time, he enjoyed reading, going for long drives, scouting for and cutting fallen trees to collect firewood, and fishing with his father and his son in Strawberry, Clark’s Fork, and Walker River. He loved flea markets and yard sales, John Wayne movies and virtually any film about World War II, and he excelled at Trivial Pursuit with his keen ability to remember even obscure details from books he had read.

After retiring from San Ramon Valley Fire Department in 2001, Eric was hired by the US Forest Service to work seasonally as a lookout at the Mt. Elizabeth and Duckwall Mountain fire lookout towers for 10 years. During this period he also volunteered frequently at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Sonora and reveled in meeting visitors from around the country and other parts of the globe. Eric and Judy’s four children each graduated from Sonora High School and went on to serve church missions and church callings, attend university, and start families of their own. In 2019 they moved to Sumner, Washington to live closer to their three daughters who had settled there with their families.

For the last 29 years of his life, Eric was afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease which gradually eroded his ability to do the things he loved and undermined his ability to share wisdom from a lifetime of public service, Christian discipleship, and overcoming the stumbling blocks of mortality with those who were closest to him during what should have been the golden years of his life. He died in Judy’s arms early on August 11 after collapsing from a heart attack.

Eric is survived by his wife Judy of Sumner, WA, his sister Sandra of Sonora, CA, daughters, Anna Karin Guthrie (Mark) of Sumner, Laura Elaine Brown (Dustin) of Lake Tapps, WA, Sherry Lee Olson of Puyallup, WA and son Scott Andrew Olson (Lani) of Belleville, IL. He is also survived by his 17 grandchildren: Mattie, Ella, Liam, Bryan, Lily, Kate, Lainey, Oliver, Craig, Ethan, Grant, Eddie, Eden, Andrew, Jacob, Charis, and Mara.

Eric’s life will be celebrated in a memorial ceremony in Sumner, WA on 23 September. In place of flowers, his family would like to encourage those who wish to honor him to consider donating to the Parkinson’s Foundation at www.parkinson.org or to the missionary fund of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at https://philanthropies.church….

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