History of Ned James Olsen

I Ned James Olsen was born of goodly parents Clarence Olsen and Mary Jane Broadhead at Creston British Columbia 9 July 1922. Elmer tells me that he and Ervin galloped their old workhorse down the main street in Creston in the middle of the night to get the doctor. Two years later the family moved back to Beazer into a log house under the ridge -a mile west of Beazer townsite, and all that is left today is one lone tree. My mother died that same year 6 September 1924. Ervin says his mother made him promise he would take care of me. A year later my dad hired Elizabeth Ada Smith Creed to come and cook for the harvesters, and nine days later on 24 October 1925 they were married. It was always a standing joke in the family that Pa couldn't afford to pay her wages so he married her, (she never officially received her wages either). She was a very good mother and worked hard to take care of our big family; Ervin, Elmer, L1oyd, Vern, Shirl, Lois.

My first two year; of school were attended in the south side of the school where Rex Beazer and his sisters live today. My grade one teacher was Verda Beazer and grade two was Athol Cooper; grade three and four my teacher was Aunt Elva Broadhead, which was held in a room of my Grandmother Sarah Ann Broadhead’s home located a quarter of a mile east of the village of Beazer.
The Clarence Olsen family had one of the first glassed in cars in Beazer and when the depression years came it was blocked up on blocks under the spruce trees. It sat there for ten years, one night my brothers got it started and drove it to Aetna to a dance, with no license or light, by going through the fields.

When I was seven years old Shirl and I went to check weasel traps north of our ranch and in one of the traps we caught a skunk. Shirl killed it, took off his belt, put it around its neck and let me drag it. It started to snow so Shirl went on to check other traps and he sent me home. Instead of going south I went west, and I finally realized I was going the wrong way. Having been taught to pray, I knelt down beside an old hay slide and prayed, then I had a strong urge to run, so I threw the skunk down, as it was too heavy to drag. I went over the big ridge, came to the fence, crawled through, and there was the road. Just then, Harry Jenkins came by in his car and asked where I was going, I said home, so he took me home. This was my earliest recollection of a spiritual experience and answer to prayer.

When I was nine years old, during the depression, my father bought a homestead from Charlie Trelease Sr., which was six miles southwest of Beazer. There was a log house there which had been used for animals, there were no windows in it, so it took much cleaning and fixing up to make it livable. Shirl and I stayed there all summer and milked a herd of cows. We enjoyed swimming and fishing in the nearby creek.

The following year in 1932, in the spring, all the family moved there from Beazer. I remember how cold our bedroom was in the back of the house where there was no heat; our quilts would have frost on them in the wintertime.
One thing I remember about being thirteen was a week at Scout Camp with no tents, and all next week it rained. Also when I was thirteen I drove horses on a gravel wagon to help gravel the road from Beazer to Mt. View. At the age of fourteen I was caretaker at the Seddon School for which I received $4.00 a month. My teachers there were Annie Luther Dawson, Martha Thomas Woolley, Wilma Tyler Campbell and Guy Jacobs. One day we were just ready to leave school when the bell rang, Mrs. Dawson's father had brought a huge bag of peanuts, which was a real treat then.

I started grade 11 while staying at Roy Ockey's, but had missed two months with harvest, and just couldn't catch up so after two months I quit school.

My Uncle Jesse lived just over the hills from us and my cousin Lyndon and I spent a lot of time together, also visiting our Grandma Broadhead i who lived just west of Jesse and Freida's. One night when Lyndon and I were coming home from a dance the battery fell out of the car and we ended up walking one and 1\2 miles to Grandma Broadhead’s in the cold west wind with no coats.
Oyster suppers were held quite frequently in those days, in the winter. One night on the way home our car froze up, so Pa decided to try some of the leftover soup, as there was no water available. It got hot and blew up all over the windshield and froze. We scraped it off as best we could but finally ran off in the ditch because we couldn't see where we were going, so we had to walk last l\2 miles home.

We spent many happy times with the Harold Martin family, dances were held in their large living room With only rough lumber on the floor. We were great friends with Minnie, Mary, and Steve. We would go to the mountains to fish and pick huckleberries and stay for a week. Over the years our families were back and forth for many occasions, Minnie, Mary, and I are still good friends and enjoy talking over old times.

October and November of 1938, Shirl, Ervin, Vern and I worked on buildings at the airport in Ft. MacLeod.
One day Lloyd and I found two little fawns whose mother had been killed so we took them home to, raise them on the bottle. When they were about a year old, my step-sister Olive was in the kitchen, turned around to see one of the deer standing in the kitchen, she let out a shriek and of course scared the deer which ran through the living room and out the window. Later on I decided to play Santa Claus so I hooked the deer up to our bob-sleigh and it took off before I could get on (thank goodness, because it went over the pole fences and then got stuck in the half closed gate by the house, it's heart just pounding) one of the metal runners was lost and we never did find it.

In l939 I worked for A.E. Foote at Welling from April to November, then came back to Beazer and lived with Uncle Jesse helping him in, the timber and with his trapline. I used some of the money I used some of the money I earned in Welling and bought thirty sheep, Lyndon provided the place and the feed, when we sold them we got $11.00 a piece for them.
I remember wanting to buy a guitar really bad, I could pay $10.00 down and $10.00 in the fall but my dad talked me out of it. Another time I worked all fall on the threshing crew and made $16.00 and Vern borrowed it from me to get married, he never did pay it back either.

When I was eighteen I went to Stavely to work on a farm, the second day an old horse I was riding fell down and landed on my foot spraining my ankle really bad, so I had to come home and helped my Pa with farming while recuperating. This same year, was when I started my career of playing for dances in my Uncle Glen's orchestra.
At nineteen I helped Dave Ehlert with stuccoing. His brother Curtis had a job, herding sheep, but wanted to stucco, so he got me to herd sheep for Alvin Eklund all summer in the mountains southwest of Pincher Creek. While there I read the Book of Mormon and gained a testimony of its truthfulness. I had to be on watch for bears or anything that might molest the sheep, and that was pretty scary, as I was alone and hardly saw anyone for weeks at a time, but the reading of the scriptures gave me the courage to face each day by myself.

I had many varied experiences playing for dances over the years, such as sleeping all night in the beer parlor in Waterton because of terrible drifting snow. Another time in deep snow and drifting snow, we had to carry drums and equipment several blocks in Hill Spring, that same night after the dance going home the wires got wet on the car quit at 3 A.M. A Cat came along trying to clear the roads just out of town and at 5 am he pulled us back to town. The year Truda Beazer was the queen of Greer, and Gold the loaded truck broke down.

I stayed in town at Pa's and played for dances with Les Taylor one year before going into the Air Force. I worked on the building of the Social Center then played for the first dance held there. Roy and I also worked on renovation of it in l980's and it is now called the Civic Center.

In the spring of 1992 WW2 was on and men were being conscripted into the army. A letter came to the post-office in Beazer for Fred James Olsen. Uncle Roy Beazer was the postmaster and had mentioned something to me about it was meant for me. I didn't want to go in the army, so I went and voluntarily joined the Air Force in November 1942 but was put on a six-month waiting list. In the meantime the police were looking for Fred James Olsen and came to see Pa, he said, "there's no one here with that name." Later on another visit from the police and I happened to be home at the time. When he said this is for you and tried to hand it to me, a letter with a call into the army, I said " that's no good to me I'm in the Air Force." Needless to say the police went away swearing.
I began training in the Air Force in May of 1943 at Edmonton Manning Depot. When I was first in training, I wanted to find where the L.D.S. church was, so I got on a city bus, and the driver didn't know where it was. Finally I got off as I thought I had probably gone too far. While standing there waiting for another bus who should walk up to me but Elmo Prince, so I asked him if he knew where the church was and he pointed across the street to the I.00F hall and said " that's where we go." I was surprised to find the church there and also I didn't know he had become active again.

After three months at Edmonton I was transferred to #3 SF.T.S. Calgary, where I worked in the control tower. I had a commanding officer who had taken a liking to me and anytime a posting came for me to go somewhere else he managed to keep me in Calgary. Just before the war ended in 1945, he was killed in a plane crash near Calgary.

One night I went to a Stake Dance and took June Leavitt of Leavitt who was in Calgary going to Garbutt Business College. Aaron Hanson came up to me and said, "I'm taking June home." I said " No you're not, I brought her." That was the beginning of a beautiful courtship and I had eyes for no one else from then on. In May, June finished her schooling and returned to Cardston to work in the Treasury Branch as a secretary until November.

On December 2nd 1944 we were married by Edward J. Wood in the Alberta Temple. After a few days leave we returned to Calgary and moved into an apartment of E.J. Wyrick where June and cousins were living while attending school. It was a basement one odd sized room for $15.00 a month, but we had access to bathroom and laundry room as well. We lived there until May l945 when the war was over and I was discharged from the Air Force. These few months were just like a honeymoon, we lived in the southwest and I had to catch a streetcar to work, sometimes very short working hours, so we had some good time together. One experience we had with tithing; we had only $10.00 left but decided we should pay our tithing and the very next day I received a cheque in the mail from my brother Ervin for a cow of mine he had sold.

We moved into the east side of Uncle Glen Broadhead's house and helped him on the farm for the summer. In the fall we lived with June's parents in Leavitt. Ray and I combined grain for Herb Walters. Late in the fall we moved back to Beazer in the upstairs of Uncle Murrel and Aunt Alta's house where Max and Marie Pitcher now live. We fixed up one room, as money and supplies were scarce. One wall was the back of a cupboard, another a quilt the other was used ten-test board. (Yes it was a three cornered room) We were happy and content as we waited the arrival of our first baby in April. One Sunday night June's parents came to visit us 4 March 1946. Her dad had heard Solon Low was looking for someone to live on his farm and take care of it, as he was an M.P. in Ottawa, and was going to move his family there. He immediately contacted Solon and asked him not to talk to anyone else until he talked to me. There were many people wanting it as it was only 3 and l\2 miles from Cardston' a very good location.

Monday March 5, Solon and I walked all over the hills, and talked and he decided we could do the job, so on 8 March 1946 we moved in and one month later on 6 April Eric Allen was born. We purchased 1931 Chevrolet car from Fred Vair of Boundary Creek, so June loaded the car and drove around by Leavitt while Lowell and I came with some cattle down the Beazer road through the mud with the wagon. We still reside here in 1994 and probably will until we die.

In a few months Solon decided to sell and gave us first chance, so I got a loan at 3% interest through the Veterans Land Act and paid 199.27 every year plus land taxes for twenty-five years until it was paid for. Some fellows lost their places because they didn't make their payments, but that was always our first priority in the fall when we sold cattle.

My activities besides working our little farm were many and varied, including driving school bus for many years, helped with the building of the new hospital, renovation of the temple. Dennis Broadhead and I worked together many years doing stucco work, house repairs etc. Then in later years Roy and I took over the business until the late 1980's I was not able to continue, so Roy and his crew are still carrying on the business.

I enjoyed rock work and made two fireplaces for Glen Jones and one for Ardell Leavitt, also one in Lethbridge and two rock planters. Dennis and I built the Fay Wray fountain on Main Street in 1967.
As I write this in 1994 I have many things to be grateful for. I enjoy my family, grandchildren and am blessed to be able to still do a bit of work on the farm.

Ned James Olsen was born 9 July 1922 in Creston British Columbia Canada the sixth
child of Clarence Olsen and Mary Jane Broadhead. His mother died when he was two
years old and the family moved to Beazer Alberta where he spent most of his growing
up years, attended school through grade ten.
His father married Elizabeth Ada Smith Creed in Oct. 1925, who was the only mother Ned
knew. She was from England, a hard worker, loved flowers and gardening, and took good
care of the large family.
Ned grew up with cousins as his best friends and had many fun times together.
When he was seventeen he started playing drums in dance bands with his Uncle Glen
Broadhead, and this carried on until the 1980's.
World War 2 came along and in 1942 Ned enlisted in the R.C.A.F.. After 3 months in
Edmonton he spent the rest of the war working at the control tower in Calgary #s.f.t.s.
He married June Leavitt of Leavitt 20 Dec. 1944 daughter of Matthew Leavitt and Ella
Broadbent. The war was over in April 1945, and they spent the next year partly in Leavitt
and Beazer.
On the 8 March 1946 they moved to a ranch 3 miles southwest of Cardston where they
still reside. Here they raised four boys and two girls: Eric, LaRae, Mervyn, Thaine,
Roy, Diana. They have twenty-three grandchildren. Many happy hours were spent around
the piano with other musical instruments, and singing the good old songs Ned played in the
bands.
Ned was diagnosed with Parkinsons in 1990 but was able to carry on limited work until about 1995 when he became more dependent on his wife and others to help him with his daily activities. 28 February 1998 he had a fall and at that time was coming down with pneumonia, and was taken by ambulance to the Cardston hospital. After two weeks in the hospital recuperating he was transferred to Long Term Care where he now stays.
He has always been a kind, easy going person, is usually smiling and is a joy to be around,
even though he doesn't talk much.

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