Lee M. Olson Obituary

April 24th, 1980 - August 9th, 2024

The following account of Lee Olson's life is taken from a collection of interviews over the last year. Some facts may be misremembered or misinterpreted.

Lee M. Olson was born on Thursday April 24th, 1980 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was about three weeks late, a reality his mother, Kris, couldn't have been too pleased with. Lee, his mother and father, Ronald, lived in a tiny house on the west side of town that they purchased for $19,000.

Kris worked in the basement as a freelance genealogist. Lee would fetch files from the cabinets and work as her secretary on rainy days. For his services he was rewarded 3 dollars an hour. He used that money to purchase Charleston Chew at the Colburn Park pool.

Lee was preceded in death by his father Ronald Lee Olson on (2/8/2016).

Ronald and Lee would make pilgrimages to Milwaukee from Green Bay to watch their Brewers. They'd always try to arrive early enough to make batting practice and so Ronald could grab the free soda token from the Designated Driver booth. In the seventh inning they would guess the attendance and whoever was furthest off would have to buy Wendy's on the way home. Ronald would always end up buying because Lee "was only eight years old and didn't have any money."

Later, the Olson's lived in the shadow of Lambeau Field. There was a church down their street from their house. Lee attended Beaumont Elementary which was close enough to walk. It was an idyllic time, Lee recalled. Playing sports with friends, throwing himself down make-shift Slip and Slides when the baseball fields flooded (like clockwork!) every year, and riding bikes for hours and miles a day. On more than one occasion Lee and friends rode ten miles outside of town to lay on the ground under radio towers so tall they touched the sky. A story that his sister Katie would later dispute.

Lee is survived by his sister Katie, born three years after him. They always got along really well, Lee recalled, but also considered that he might be biased in that remembrance. For a time Lee and Katie were at odds about whether Nirvana or Pearl Jam were the better band. They shared each other's dry wit and kind quiet demeanor. Katie's son Robin and daughter Emelia were Lee's personal laugh track and lights of his life.

The first albums Lee ever owned were The Moody Blues 1987 release that included the song "I Know You're Out There Somewhere", Aerosmith's Greatest Hits, and Back In Black by AC/DC. The song "Hells Bells" was his introduction to Rock and Roll.

If baseball was his first love then rock music was his 2nd. He started playing in his bedroom, rudimentary songs with a rotating cast of players. The rotating band played on: Chris, Andy, Earl, Joe, Mike all making new songs and sometimes new bands every night. As they grew older their interest in punk music brought them to The Concert Cafe. Lee's life permanently changed at The Concert Cafe when in March of 1997 he attended his first concert there: The Queers, The Groovy Ghoulies and Screw 32.

Lee worked at Burger King and was bad with cars and kept a ledger of his expenses down to the cent. He got his own place senior year of high school. He had a million friends, living in photos in shoe boxes in the basement of his home with his wife Erin.

In 2000 he moved to Madison. He got a job at Shopko from a friend and then helped other friends get jobs at Shopko. In Madison he found parks down every little street. He attended shows at both of the UW Unions. Lee and his friend from Algoma, Lydia played in a band together called The Twits.

The Shopko job didn't make him rich, but he didn't need much. An efficiency apartment (not even big enough for a bed), the cheapest beer from Woodman's, creative writing classes at MATC, friends sleeping under his coffee table. Lee read Hunter S Thompson and Kerouac.

In August of 2007 Lee moved to Milwaukee. He was in a band with Chris, Lydia and Michele called The Gut Reactions. They had friends from all the years playing shows. They continued that life by playing and attending shows at: Cactus Club, Franks Power Plant, The Riverhorse, Tonic and others. Gut Reactions toured the midwest, playing Iowa City, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Kalamazoo, Columbus, Chicago amongst others.

Lee idolized the stage persona of Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Lee Roth and Eric Davidson. Once a work buddy attended one of Lee's shows and afterwards said "great set man, but why did you keep licking your palms?"

Lee and his friends played in bands because they loved it, because that is what they did.

Lee is survived by his wife Erin, who he met officially when another Lee band: Static Eyes, helmed the DJ series at Blackbird bar called From Stage to Booth. Lee hung out after the bar and walked Erin home where they listened to Gin Blossoms and En Vogue into the early morning.

They were married and living together the next year. They had a courthouse wedding followed by a party at Holler Park, followed by a dance, singalong, party at Black Bird that was the funnest night of their lives. Lee still played in bands but was slowing down. He worked at Captel downtown and rode the bus or walked all the way when money got short. Chris and Lydia lived close by. He wrote. He walked.

Lee and Erin loved to travel and found a way to have fun wherever they went. Big cities, little towns, trails in the woods, it didn't matter. They visited New York City, New Orleans, The Badlands, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Memphis; where they would drive straight to Payne's BBQ before doing anything else. They lived a life of big and little traditions. They celebrated the days as they came.

They spent time in nature. They mini golfed whenever possible. Lee mini golfed every year on his birthday. He loved it so much. And would kick Erin's butt, though he wasn't one to brag.

In April of 2021 Lee was at the dog park with his dog Dakota. Dakota ran behind him and clipped his leg. Lee fell and couldn't get back on his feet. Following a battery of tests and doctor visits that lasted a year and a half, Lee was diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gherig's disease). This time is marked by a wellspring of support and visitors, frustrations, laughter, hopelessness, immeasurable amounts of human kindness and immeasurable amounts of human suffering.

Even facing this diagnosis, and a diminished life expectancy, Lee and Erin's life of dreams marched on. They took a trip to MLB Spring Training in the Arizona desert. It was a trip that Ronald always wanted to make with Lee but never did.

Friends flew in from all over the country to meet them. It was a difficult trip full of new challenges, but Erin did everything she could to provide a once in a lifetime experience and the friends rallied to help, maneuvering Lee in and out of the air BnB, into the back yard where they all gave him a bath.

Lee could have been embarrassed by this but wasn't, instead he saw the humor and joy in his friends seeing him naked so often, a disarming quality he always deployed to make people feel special and at ease. They grilled and played Password. They saw tumbleweeds. The desert sunrise. They ate Mexican food. Lee saw the Saguaro Cactus for the first and last time.

On his coming end Lee said.

"I do think about how many more Brewers seasons I have. There might not be many more. This many more chances of them making it to the World Series and winning it. Physically there are peaks and valleys with ALS. So sometimes it's just tallying down the things I can't do anymore. But then getting rid of that and rallying around the things I can do. I saw some friends cry for like a millisecond, I've gotten the sweetest texts back, saying 'You're the kindest person I've ever met,' and I'm like I think you're texting the wrong person.

Out of nowhere I will be sentimental. Yes. I don't sit down and start recollecting, but I'll notice something, see an old picture and it will take me back. Especially to those years between 8-13, those stick, specifically, more memories from that time of my life than any other time in my life. Playing baseball, football, basketball, tennis, soccer. It was always fun to get together with a bunch of kids on the summer morning.

We'd just bike to the other side of Green Bay, and say yeah that was awesome but now we have to bike 8 miles back home. I remember there were these big radio towers on the east side of Green Bay, we'd bike across the river, to get to the east side of Green Bay by these towers, a big street with no cars. Put our bikes down and laid in the street and just looked up at the sky, yeah, you wouldn't do that today. There's traffic everywhere. People are everywhere now. It felt slower back then, a little bit."

Lee Olson was a singer, a husband, a son, a friend, a brother, a writer, a student, a normal job worker, a letter writer, a thinker. And he was maybe mostly a romantic who had friends all over the country.

And it is noted here: that in the last week of his life, when everything was leaving his body, people flew in, drove in, biked in, walked in to stay with him. To sit by his side and play his songs and hold his hand.

Noted here, that the house was full and cars lined that block of Herman St. The weather every day was 77 and sunny. The leaf shadows from the London Plane tree beside the patio table in the backyard drew inky shadows across people's hands and faces as they smoked cigarettes and drew and talked quietly about being young and about the future and took turns going inside to talk to Lee, even though he couldn't talk back.

That for nights they filled the perfect air with laughter and recollections of dumb jokes that Lee would love the most and barely slept. That at the end of these days, which seemed like years, Lee left.

And when the car came to take him away, his loved ones waited and helped tidy up. They didn't say much but were calm and sweet like a lullabye, for at least that part of the suffering was over.

In lieu of flowers feel free to send donations to The ALS association of Wisconsin or the Milwaukee County Parks Foundation.