The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2017 87 medical help for hundreds of sick and homeless street cats. Mrs. Martin is survived by her sisters, Sister Edith, Daughter of Charity, and AimeeThompson; two brothers, Paul and HaysThompson; sons Rafael, Joe and Michael Martin of Austin, Texas; and four grandchildren. n Oscar J. Olson Jr., 83, a retired For- eign Service officer, died of cancer on Aug. 28 in Alexandria, Va. Mr. Olson was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. His love of travel began with road trips his family took to Mexico and across the United States. He began to consider foreign service as a career—and took the first of his many voyages by ocean liner when he spent a summer at the University of Oslo. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Yale University, he served in the U.S. Army in Germany. Entering the Foreign Service in 1957, Mr. Olson’s first post was Caracas, where he served as a consular officer and staff aide to the ambassador. He next served as an administrative officer in Barcelona, where, as principal liaison with the U.S. Navy, he would accompany naval officers from the Sixth Fleet on courtesy calls to the Spanish admiral. Most of his career was spent in eco- nomic/commercial positions, beginning in 1964 in Juarez, where he was also the only American member of the Juarez Rotary Club. After a year of mid-career post-graduate work at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, he was assigned to Intelligence and Research in the Western European office and then to the economics section in West Berlin. From there he was assigned to Panama, returning stateside after two years to serve as the executive director of the inter- agency committee responsible for U.S. participation in “Man and the Biosphere,” a UNESCO program that provided a frame- work for international collaboration in efforts at sustainable development, biodi- versity and natural resource management. Following stints in management opera- tions and as economic counselor in Quito, Mr. Olson retired from the Foreign Service in 1984. He kept busy after retirement, spend- ing a year at the international office of the Smithsonian Institution and working for the private firm Business Environment Risk Information. He also began working part-time as a senior reviewer with the State Depart- ment’s Freedom of Information Act office, a position he held for 20 years, until November 2015. Mr. Olson took an active part in the second-career ministry of his late wife, the Rev. Patricia Olson, trading worldwide postings for service as a pastor’s spouse at United Methodist churches big and small across northern and central Virginia. He continued to indulge his love of travel and passenger liners, and was active in DACOR, the Civitan Club of Arlington and the Norwegian Society, among oth- ers. At Greenspring Retirement Village in Springfield, Va., one of his many roles included playing piano for singalongs. Mr. Olson is survived by his brother, John M. Olson (and his wife, Claudia) of Corpus Christi, Texas; a son, Michael A. Olson, of Amsterdam; two daughters, Kirsten O. Pruski (and her husband, Ken) of Dallas, Texas, and Kathleen K. Olson (and her husband, John Beatty) of Allentown, Pa.; and five grandchildren: Sarah, Audrey, Paul, Daniel and Benjamin Pruski. n Ellen Kruger Radday, 79, wife of the late USIA FSO Harold Franz Radday, died peacefully on July 3, 2016, in Arling- ton, Va., of pancreatic cancer.