In Memory of Barbara Olson

Barbara Olson (December 27, 1955 – September 11, 2001)
Door County encompasses nearly the entire Wisconsin peninsula.

It's a beautiful place. Little towns rim both the Green Bay and the Lake Michigan shores of the county.

Although I like the lake side, it's the bay side of the peninsula that I love.

From the time I was a very little girl, my family would vacation there. We would stay in a cottage steps away from the beach. I spent hours building sandcastles. I loved playing on the swings. I can remember when my grandpa would gently push me, how accomplished I felt when I no longer needed to be pushed, and how proud he was of me.

Door County was where my parents spent their honeymoon. My husband and I spent our honeymoon there, too.

I understand why Barbara Olson loved Door County so much.

She used to appear on Larry King Live from Ellison Bay, a little town toward the tip of the peninsula on the bay side.

Her husband Ted Olson talked about Barbara's feelings for the place on a tribute show that Larry King did in her honor. It aired on December 25, 2001.

T. OLSON: ...[S]he's buried up in Door County, Wisconsin, very close to where she appeared on your show so many times last summer and a couple summers before, because she loved that place so much, and she's there now. Thank goodness...

KING: Whenever we see that scene, when it was not this set, it was Wisconsin.

T. OLSON: Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. She just thought it was so great to be on your show from Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. She was proud of the fact that both Larry King in Los Angeles and somebody in New York and somebody in Washington and Barbara Olson in Ellison Bay would sit...

KING: Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.

I remember once seeing her on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder. Being that Snyder was born and raised in Milwaukee, they talked a bit about Door County and Wisconsin.

In addition to admiring Barbara Olson for her incredible intelligence and her wit, I felt a sort of kinship with her because of the Door County connection.

A popular Door County activity is watching the sun set into Green Bay. People gather along the shore and just watch the day come to an end. (Door County doesn't have much of a nightlife.)

When I was there in the summer of 2006, being treated to a spectacular sunset, I was caught off guard a bit when my thoughts abruptly turned to Barbara Olson.

There I was, staring at the beautiful scene, and I felt so sad.

It tore me up to think that Barbara Olson was buried at Ellison Bay rather than watching the sun go down and looking forward to another day.

And why?

Because on September 11, 2001, she was on board American Airlines Flight 77 and hijackers on a suicide mission crashed it into the Pentagon.

My sadness turned to anger. At that moment it seemed like I had stepped back in time and was feeling the shock of the attacks all over again.

The beauty of that sunset made the gut-wrenching recognition that terrorists had robbed the experience of such moments from close to 3000 individuals even more painful.

I thought of all that the terrorists had taken from us, and all they had done in the name of God. Part of me still finds that incomprehensible.

On this sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I'm thinking of Barbara Olson, her husband, family, and friends. I'm thinking of all the victims' loved ones.

Today, I wish them peace.

I'm reminded that the sun doesn't really set. To our eyes it appears to be gone, but it actually is just shining somewhere else until we see it again.


Ephraim, Door County, Wisconsin
June 2006