Homer E. Olsen, a native of Climax, Minn., and the son of Oluf Olsen ’26 and Elma Olsen, spent his early summers driving a tractor on the family durham wheat farm in Dahlen, N.D., memorizing canonical poetry and contemplating how to avoid spending future winters in freezing weather.
The Valedictorian of his college class, Olsen graduated from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa in 1957. In his senior year, he was president of the Luther College Band where he played the baritone horn, as had his father before him. He earned his doctor of medicine degree at the University of Chicago Medical School. He completed his internship at the University of Oregon Medical School and his residency in psychiatry at the University of Colorado Medical School. Olsen is also a graduate of the Denver Psychoanalytic Institute. He served on the faculty at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center from 1969 through 1998 becoming a clinical professor of psychiatry in 1991. He was a training and supervising analyst at the Denver Psychoanalytic Institute from 1988 to 1998. He also served as chairman of the curriculum committee of that Institute from 1989-93. He was in a private-practice of psychiatry from 1972 to 1998. From 1972-75 he was clinical director and from 1977-95 the chief of outpatient psychiatry at the Denver Veterans Administration Hospital Mental Health Clinic. A member of several professional psychiatric and psychoanalytic associations, Olsen was a frequent lecturer and presenter and the coauthor of journal articles. He was named a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 1992. He received the Distinguished Service Award from Luther College in 1997.
Homer met the “love of my life,” Dianne Cox, in 1964 while completing his chief residency in psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center where she was a social work intern. They truly connected on a ski excursion to Aspen, Colo., and married seven months later.
They moved east where he served in the U.S. Air Force from 1965-67 as chief of psychiatry at the U.S.A.F. Hospital at Langley Air Force Base in Langley, Va. The couple then returned to Denver where they lived for thirty years. They spent weekends in the mountains in Breckenridge, Colo., and summers at their vacation home on Ten Mile Lake in Hackensack, Minn.
Homer retired in 1998, moving to Tucson, Ariz., during the winter and expanding his time at the lake during the summer. Winters in Tucson found him actively indulging in his passions of great golf, good friends, spirited ping pong and time to savor works of biography, Shakespeare and history. He had a deep attachment to his Ten Mile Lake home where he again relished his golf, having fallen in love with the game as a lad. He took great joy in having the time to watch his daughters and his granddaughters blossom in the Ten Mile Lake atmosphere. His Hackensack area book group of lively-minded men of different political persuasions brought him much pleasure. He was a teacher of many things to his family including tennis, skiing, sailing, and appreciation for art and poetry. He will be remembered as a model of loving support, wisdom, determination, modesty, sincerity, ambition, hard work, introspection and integrity.
He died of cancer in Minn., on Dec. 31, 2015, while surrounded by his immediate family. He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Dianne, daughters Lise K. Olsen-Dufour (Eric Olsen-Dufour), Sara M Olsen (Arzhang Kalbali), granddaughters Emma Olsen-Dufour, Amanda Olsen-Dufour, Donya Majidi-Olsen, and sisters, Andrea Hauge Bacon, Evangeline Michalson (Edgar) and many wonderful nieces and nephews.
Memorials are preferred to the International Rescue Committee, the American Cancer Society, or the Jim Schwartz Environmental Fund of the Ten Mile Lake Association. All sites can be found online.
Memorial events will be held in Tucson, Denver and, in the summer of 2016, in the Hackensack area.
A Memorial Service for Homer was held March 26, 2016, in the Dean Krugman Hall on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo. Arrangements were by Dennis Funeral Home, Walker, Minn.