WESTMINSTER, CO (February 20, 2012) – A memorial service will be conducted for retired Evangelical Covenant Church medical missionary Clitus Olson, 95, at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Covenant Village of Colorado.
Olson was born October 20, 1916, in Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Omaha University in 1939 and the medical school at University of Nebraska in 1948.
He married Dorothy Mae Nord on March 20, 1948. She preceded him in death in 2010.
The couple was called to missionary service in the Congo in 1950. Olson served the hospitals in Karawa, Loko and Wasolo in the Ubangui, as well as at the Institut Medical Evangelique at Kimpese, where he began his focus on medical education. In his final years on the mission field, he was the founding dean of the medical school in Kisangani in what would become the Protestant University of Congo.
Following his service in Congo, he started a surgical practice in Goodland, Kansas. Upon his retirement, he served in multiple capacities with Save the Children and the Paul Carlson Partnership.
He is survived by his children a son, Paul Olson, and three daughters, Eleanor Bowman, Barbara Molina, and Dr. Joan Harding.
