Virginia Evans Olsen

Virginia Evans Olsen, born in Casper, Wyoming on November 28, 1931, died peacefully in her sleep on April 4, 2023. She is survived and remembered by many friends and relatives including her children (Nina, Karl and Dan,) 8 grandchildren, her niece (Terry Dudley,) and the women of her 'group.' She was preceded in death by her parents (William and Selma Evans,) sisters (Barbara Hix and Audrey House,) niece (Nancy Miller,) nephew (Jeff Hix,) and former husband, (Harold William Olsen, div 1986.)

Universally acknowledged as woman of exceptional intelligence, Virginia was proud of her academic achievements: she was a Fulbright Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After earning her Master's Degree in at the University of Oregon, Virginia moved to Washington DC to work for the US Information Services where she wrote for the magazine 'America.' In later life she worked for the University of Denver Law School and for the US Census. In retirement she volunteered for Legal Aid, read books for the blind and tested the hearing of newborns.

Memorial donations to Colorado Legal Services preferred.

She was especially fond of the phrase "Yes, Virginia, there is a...(Santa Claus)". One year she tried to convince Nina that Mother's Day wasn't an important holiday. She received this in reply:

Dear Editor—

I am 48 years old. My mother says that Mother’s Day is a meaningless commercial holiday. I say, if we read about it on the internets, mustn’t it be significant? Please tell her the truth, isn’t Mother’s Day for real?

Nina Olsen

Dear Virginia Olsen,

Virginia, you have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. Mother’s Day has become a commercial event throughout the world, but it is rooted in traditions that date back thousands of years. The earliest Mother's Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. During the 1600's, the early Christians in England celebrated a day to honor Mary, the mother of Christ. On that day, now known as Mothering Sunday, mothers were reunited with daughters in service and sons in apprenticeships who were released by their masters for the weekend. Julia Ward Howe and Ann Reeves Jarvis are credited with promoting the creation of this the holiday in the US. Their efforts were rooted in pacifism and social activism.

Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day an official national holiday in 1914. Such was the universality of the event that it became commercialized almost immediately. Commerce succeeds where the product is attractive or necessary to the consumer. Everyone loves his mother, everyone is willing to spend money to tell her so. Is a cliché any less true because it is a predictable and unoriginal thought?

Yes, Virginia, everyone loves her mother. Mothers exist to personify love and generosity and devotion, and they give to their children life’s highest beauties and joys. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Mothers! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith, no poetry and no romance to make tolerable our existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light that illuminates childhood would be extinguished.

Even if we do not thank our mothers every day, what does that prove? Nobody calls their mother, but that is no sign that she isn’t loved, needed and valued. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can do. Only faith, poetry, love and commerce can push aside their carelessness and encourage them to express that which they should express daily. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else so real and abiding.

No Mother’s Day! Thanks to the mothers who live now and who will live forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, they will continue to make glad the heart of our eternal childhood.