Scott Swanson
Eric “Ric” Olson has had to curtail his involvement in local veterans affairs since COVID-19 hit the area in the spring of 2020, but he’s been one of the most active leaders in the area in the past two decades.
Olson, 72, got involved in the Vietnam Veterans of America Mid-Valley Chapter 585 more than 20 years ago and had been a very active member and leader in the organization prior to the pandemic, including serving twice as president.
The local organization serves veterans throughout the mid-valley, including Sweet Home, Brownsville, Albany, Lebanon, Halsey and Scio.
Prior to the pandemic, Olson said it was “one of the most active in the state,” numbering close to 100 members.
A pool table provided by Chapter 585 to the Lebanon Veterans Home in Lebanon was custom-built, with a depiction of an American bald eagle in flight.
The chapter helped handle parking at the Lebanon Strawberry Festival and the Sweet Home Sweet Ride car show and was a regular participant in the Albany Veterans Day Parade.
“A lot of times we came away with a first-place trophy,” Olson said. “We built a heck of a float.”
Chapter members often engaged in aid efforts, such as helping a fellow veteran with cash to buy enough material to replace the plumbing under his house.
“We’ve done that a lot of times over the years,” Olson said. “We’ve also built a significant number of wheelchair porches.”
All that slowed to a crawl with the arrival of the virus.
“Everything has been almost completely shut down because of COVID,” he told a reporter last week. “The things we used to do we aren’t doing. I don’t see that getting any better anytime soon.”
VVA, founded in 1979, is the only national Vietnam veterans organization congressionally chartered and exclusively dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families, according to the group’s website, vvv.org.
The organization seeks to “promote and support the full range of issues important to Vietnam veterans, to create a new identity for this generation of veterans, and to change public perception of Vietnam veterans” through lobbying efforts, agency watchdog activities, research into the trauma experienced by American servicemen and women in Vietnam, and accounting for MIAs and POWs from the Vietnam War.
Local VVA chapters raise public awareness to issues related to all veterans, such as health risks to veterans and their offspring caused by Agent Orange, dioxin. Members help veterans and their families learn about their benefits and assist in issues they may be having in life. Chapter 585 funded a scholarship program at Linn-Benton Community College for children of veterans.
“We’re an organization whose main purpose is to help veterans,” Olson said.
Olson was born in Wisconsin, but grew up “mostly on the beaches of Southern California,” he said.
“Santa Monica, Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Sunset Beach – I grew up on it.”
His own involvement in the war began in February of 1969, when, as a newlywed to his wife Sue, he was drafted at age 20. He served in the Army’s 25th Division, 2-14 Infantry, First Platoon, Alpha Company in Cu Chi and Dau Tieng in the Ho Bo Woods, where he walked point for about seven months.
“I was a grunt, a ground-pounder,” Olson told The New Era in 2007, when he was named the VVA Mid-Valley Chapter’s Veteran of the Year.
He later discovered that the area he was in was the most heavily booby-trapped area in southern Vietnam.
Olson was injured by shrapnel and discharged in 1970 after receiving two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, as well as three Army commendations, two with a “V” device for valor, and three air medals, each recognizing 25 hours logged aboard a helicopter.
Back in the States, he worked a number of jobs and, in the meantime, learned his best friend was considering a move north.
“When I got back from ‘Nam, he told me I ought to move up to Oregon with him. He had a job waiting for him, working for a motorhome manufacturer. His brother and two other guys had started a company up here in Junction City.”
Then another friend asked Olson to drive a load of furniture to Oregon for her.
“She said she’d pay my airfare home,” he recalled. “I said, ‘That sounds great.'”
He made the trip and “the further I went north, the more I loved it – all the green, all the trees.” By the time he reached Grants Pass, Olson said, he was sold.
“I told Sue that I wanted to go up to Oregon.”
They sold their house in La Habra, Calif., in 1976, and headed north. He started working with his friend’s family’s company, the Caribou Manufacturing Company, which later became Monaco Coach Corp. From there he moved to Oregon Freeze Dry, which manufactured the long-range reconnaissance patrol rations he’d eaten while in Vietnam. He also worked at Synthatech, which manufactured pharmaceutical components, and helped his younger brother with a locksmithing business in Key West, Fla., before retiring in 2004.
Olson has been married to Sue for 52 years. They have four children, Eric Jr., Patty Hankins, Tim and Debbie Walvatne. They have seven grandchildren.
Olson, who was recovering from a stay in the hospital (“not COVID”) when he spoke to a reporter earlier this month, said he hopes to see the VVA “start growing again.”
He said the organization is open to all kinds of Vietnam veterans and also has opportunities for those who can’t qualify as veterans of the war to join up as associates.
“We’re now having once-a-month meetings again,” he said. “Very soon now, I hope we’ll have our once-a-month breakfast at the American Legion in Lebanon.”