Marlene Olson

Marlene M. Olson, 77, of Ord passed away on Sunday, October 10, 2021; at her home in Ord.

A Celebration of Life will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, October 15, 2021, at the Ord Memorial Chapel. Her brother-in-law, Paul Oster will conduct the service.  The family will receive friends on Friday beginning at 1:00 p.m. until service time.

Memorials are suggested to the Charity of the Donor's Choice.

Marlene Margaret Olson was born at the family ranch home near Bartlett, Nebraska, the third of four children to Harold and Katherine (Anderson) Olson.

She was baptized and confirmed in the Bartlett United Methodist Church. She attended rural schools and Bartlett School, graduating from Wheeler County High School in 1962.  Then, she attended five semesters at the University of Connecticut, beginning a major in philosophy and spending some weekend and vacation time in New York City where her sister, Cherie, lived. There she experienced great music, opera, theatre and spent much time in art museums, also enjoying the people and the streets which were endlessly interesting.

In 1965, Marlene visited San Francisco and fell in love with the city in its beautiful natural setting. She soon moved there and stayed for twenty-six years. She worked in an office at Macy's where she came to know many wonderful people and how the retail world worked; buying goods from all over the world and selling it to both locals and visitors from all over the world.

Besides studying, reading and literature, Marlene loved classical music, so she regularly attended symphony and chamber music concerts. She considered her love for this music one of the greatest gifts to her life, including recordings and radio broadcasts which she could enjoy later in Nebraska. For years, Marlene always attended the performances of the American Conservatory Theater. She had read all of Shakespeare and many playwrights, but to her nothing was better than a great live performance. She also loved the visual arts and did some paintings while in her early 30's. Those paintings still hang in her apartment.

Marlene loved to go on walks and did so almost every day of her life from mid-teens on. She considered San Francisco a walker's paradise. There were up and down hills with beautiful views, long beaches, long bridges and long parks. In the later years while living near Golden Gate Park she often attended events at the Jewish Community Library (sometimes a lecture, sometimes music) and there had some of the most interesting and profound conversations in her life with Hebrew scholars, about the Bible, its translations, and translational errors still being discovered.

In 1991, Marlene returned to Nebraska when she learned that her mother was no longer able to live alone. She lived with and cared for her mother in Burwell for several years. In 1998, they moved to Ord and Marlene continued to live there after her mother's death in 2010. She loved the beautiful North Loup River valley and thought of the local farmers as "artists of the soil".

Marlene liked people and considered her fellow human beings the true "wonders of the world".

Survivors include two sisters and a brother-in-law, Cherie of New Zealand and Roma and Paul Oster of Rockaway, New Jersey.

She was preceded in death by her parents; and a brother, Kenton.