Posted on 12/09/2001 4:36:53 AM PST by Catspaw
Barbara Olson laid to rest in Door County
Commentator slain in Sept. 11 attacks
Mike Hoeft
Mhoeft@greenbaypressgazette.com
ELLISON BAY — When her plane was hijacked Sept. 11, Washington lawyer Barbara Olson kept her wits and used her cell phone to give help and guidance to authorities about the terrorist act that was unfolding.
The conservative TV commentator and wife of U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson learned during her two cell phone calls that two other hijacked flights had struck the World Trade Center in New York. Minutes later her plane slammed into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.
“She knew the unspeakable horror she awaited,” her husband said Saturday. “She died fighting for freedom. She refused to surrender.”
Barbara Olson, 45, a native of Houston, was buried Saturday in her beloved Door County.
Ted Olson, whose family has roots in Door County going back five generations, told 150 mourners at Bethel Baptist Church in Ellison Bay that their presence was a great comfort to his family.
He said his wife cherished the time spent at their cabin in Ellison Bay during summer vacations.
“It was hard to get her to leave,” he said. His wife, a frequent guest on Larry King’s show on CNN, refused to go to his studios when she was on vacation. So the show came to Door County.
The show’s producers sent satellite TV trucks from Chicago to do her interview.
“There were trucks parked on the road outside our little cabin,” Olson recalled. That happened about 15 times, he said.In a videotape played at the church, the talk show host said Olson was not only a guest on his show but a friend.
“Her opinions weren’t always easy to like, but she was,” King said on the tape.
Jeff Weborg, a cousin of Ted Olson, said Barbara Olson rubbed elbows with the powerful but acted as an ordinary person when she came to Door County.
“She stood in line for the fish boil like anybody else,” Weborg said after the memorial service.
“She fell in love with the place.”Jean Casey of Ellison Bay said she didn’t know Barbara Olson though she may have bumped into her at the grocery store. She and her husband, Bill, came to the service out of support for the family.
The service reflected how the Sept. 11 tragedy hit close to home.
“The deaths affect all of us,” Jean Casey said.
Susan Olson told the group her sister-in-law was a heroine who died as she lived: “With fiery passion. She did not hide, shrink or cower.”
Barbara and Ted Olson were rising stars in Washington conservative politics when they married in 1996. They entertained government dignitaries often at their Great Falls, Va., home.
Ted Olson, born in Chicago, served as assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel in the Reagan administration from 1981-84. He was in private practice on constitutional law and argued 15 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He argued George Bush’s election case to the high court last December.
Barbara Bracher, meanwhile, started out as a professional ballerina. She earned money for law school by working for Hollywood film producers. She excelled at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.
She met Olson at a legal conference in 1989, where he was discussing laws on organized crime. Barbara Olson later wrote a best-seller, “Hell to Pay,” about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s financial dealings.
Ted Olson, 61, said his wife was just one of thousands of Americans murdered on Sept. 11. “They were targets selected at random to be killed because they were Americans,” he said.
He noted that terrorists took advantage of American freedoms and protections to carry out their plan.“They took these gifts and turned them into instruments of death,” he said.
The rights and values that make America free also make us vulnerable, he said, but they also will make America victorious.
“Those dreadful people hurt us but they will not conquer us,” Olson said.
I did have to smile when Ted's cousin said she "stood in line for the fish boil like anyone else."
This is true in her other dealings as well. A more down-to-earth person I have never met.
Ya sure, and I'll betcha it was 'lutefisk'!!!
That particular opening left a wound that may never be completely healed.
The only people that will not miss her - are the ones that probably applauded at the news that her plane had went down.
She will be more than just 'missed'......
No, dat's a Minnesota kinda ting.
During the devastation of World War II, Pope Pius XII said, "The future belongs to those who love, not to those who hate."
Barbara Olson, full of life, cheerful, laughing, smiling, loving, was the opposite of the dark powers that brought her death. But their evil deed was in vain.
We are people of life. And no terrorist, no matter how powerful, can take that away. As Pope John Paul II has said, "When God gives life, he gives it forever." We believe in the resurrection of the body on the Last Day. We Catholics also believe that the soul is immortal; it cannot be destroyed. We believe that Barbara Olson is alive, not just in our hearts and in our memories, but actually alive, fully conscious and aware. Now.
We know this because Christ is risen from the dead. And if it isn't true, if Barbara is really gone and gone forever, if you will never see her smile again, or hear her laughter, then this is all playacting. And I had better go and get another job.
Because there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem, our hearts, though mourning, are full today. We will see Barbara again.
Death cannot win against life.
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