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Donald E. Olson ’43

Donald E. Olson ’43, a retired pulmonologist and internist, reported missing June 6, 1996, while fishing with friends on the Deschutes River in Central Oregon. He earned a PhD in neuroanatomy from what is now Oregon Health Sciences University in 1948 and became staff physician at St. Vincent Hospital in Portland in 1955. He was president of the medical staff in 1961 and 1962, the youngest physician to have held the office. He was a senior faculty member of the department of medicine at St. Vincent, a responsibility that included serving as chair of the residency review committee and the curriculum committee. He was a "role-model physician, teacher, and human being." After his retirement in 1992, he continued to teach and act as attending physician at the Veterans Administration Hospital and Medical Center. In 1992, he was named a Master of the American College of Physicians, the third Oregon doctor to receive the honor since its creation in 1926. Survivors include his wife, two sons, two daughters, a brother and sister, and five grandchildren.

Appeared in Reed magazine: November 1996

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