Eric Olson
Services will be held at Douglass Funeral Home at 51 Worthen Rd. in Lexington on Saturday, Dec. 1 at 9:45 a.m. for Eric Olson of Lincoln (formerly of Lexington), who passed away November 24. he leaves four children (Matthew, Lincoln resident Margaret, Sigrid, and Charles) and four grandchildren (Katherine and Erik Svetlichny and Benjamin and Peter Price-Olson). He was preceded in death by his wife of nearly 60 years, Setha G. Olson.
Born June 4, 1925, the only child of hardworking but poor Swedish immigrants, Eric was raised in Montclair, N.J. during the Great Depression, and by way of his intelligence and hard work was able to win a full scholarship to Columbia University, shortly before entering the U.S. Army in 1943. He trained in the artillery and never saw combat, but was scheduled to participate in the invasion of the Japanese home islands when Japan surrendered.
After the war, he graduated from Columbia with degrees in mathematics and physics and embarked on a successful career in engineering, mostly in defense research and development, with a short stint in solar energy research in the late 1970s. He was also very supportive of Setha’s professional career, both when they were first together and when she returned to the workforce when their children were older.
The greatest challenge of Eric’s life was advocating and providing for his severely autistic older son. At a time when autism was routinely blamed on supposedly uncaring parents and services were nonexistent, Eric and Setha worked tirelessly to find help for their son and to make it easier for other parents of autistic and intellectually disabled children to find help and resources.
Eric became a board member and then president of the Association for Mentally Ill Children and, together with Setha, were committed and active members as AMIC and other advocacy organizations fought for for the passage of Massachusetts Chapter 766, the first law to guarantee the right to a free and appropriate public education for all children regardless of disability in 1972. This legislation became a model for the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Together with his family, Eric enjoyed skiing and hiking, and was also an accomplished mineral collector in his youth. After he retired from the MITRE Corp., he and Setha traveled extensively, including trekking to near Mount Everest in Nepal, traveling the Silk Road in China and Pakistan, and trips to Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands.
Interment will be at Westview Cemetery in Lexington. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Lurie Center for Autism.