It seems weird to start an essay with an obituary, but here goes. This is from the Seattle Times earlier this year:

"Windsor Lincoln OLSON Windsor Olson kicked the bucket on May 31st - peacefully in his sleep. Made it to the big eight O. Everyone who knew Windsor considered him a friend, a character and bon vivant. He was also known as Bucky, Ole, Happy Jack, Gramps, Winnie, The King Kong of Ping Pong, Jack Hazzard and Windsor Lincoln Olson (World Famous Private Eye). Windsor was a wiz and small business entrepreneur extraordinaire, starting and then selling an armored car business, Bucky's messenger service, Seattle Private Eye tours, and the International Table Tennis team - The Seattle Sockeyes. And many others. He was practically unbeatable at cribbage, displayed his incredible green thumb with his vegetable garden, super trained his dog, Max who could "wow" you with his tricks. An expert cook and lover of the unusual dish. Opening day of fishing season each year, he was the one who always caught the big lunker. Later in life he turned to painting. His talent unleashed a flurry of paintings and drawings that everybody took an immediate liking to. He was a true renaissance man. The world has lost an original and will remember Windsor as the most kind, most generous and most unique gentle man who made us all laugh. And somewhere, Windsor is still "hot on the trail." He leaves his high school sweetheart and wife of over 60 years, three wonderful children, three grandchildren, two great grandchildren, a brother and a sister. In lieu of flowers, Windsor would have wanted you to go to the nearest Casino and play his favorite Keno numbers (2,12,22,23,17,18,53,54) on an eight spot ticket. And hit it big!"!

A very fine obit, but it fails to mention his McCleary connection. Without Windsor Olson, the famed McCleary Bear Festival might very well have died in the 1960s and gone the way of the barely remembered Elma Slug Festival.

First, let's start with McCleary. The place was originally a lumber camp and later a company town under the thumb of Henry McCleary. Around 1925 a local newspaper, under the humorous name of The McCleary Stimulator was created by the Craft twins, Ray and Roy. Both became professional journalists in the outside world, but Ray was killed at an early age in an airplane accident. Roy, meanwhile, made his way to Hollywood and became a publicist for Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s. Supposedly, it was Roy who thought it was good idea for Marilyn to publicize the movie "The Seven Year Itch" by standing over a grate in NYC. Leave it to a McCleary guy to think of that.

Meanwhile, back in McCleary, a childhood friend of the Crafts by the name of Norman Porter reactivated the McCleary Stimulator. You would think other editors would've taken the time lapse opportunity to claim a new name, but noooooo. Porter had to reuse the old name. By now we are up to 1953.

To make a long story short, McCleary was one hurting town by the mid-1950s. The town appealed to the UW Bureau of Community Development for help, and in an exercise that garnered the praise and attention of Socialist Norman Thomas, the town developed an improvement plan of some 200 points, including a town festival.

The first McCleary Second Growth Festival in 1959 included a sideshow of a bear meat contest (later turned to bear stew). Craft, who by this time had become an editor of a weekly paper in Stevenson, Wash., teased his boyhood friend Porter about the superior quality of bear meat from Skamania County as compared to Grays Harbor County, and the contest was on. Porter and Craft engaged in a "vicious" print war for the next few years on this topic.

So the McCleary Second Growth Festival quickly became known as the McCleary Bear Festival. Porter and Craft were gone from the McCleary scene by the late 1960s, and the festival was starting to falter. Enter Windsor Olson.

Windsor Olson, a Seattle-based private eye and WWII vet, was most famously known as the founder of Seattle's Bucky's bicycle messenger service, the King Kong of Ping Pong as the founder of the Seattle Sockeyes, an internationally known ping-pong team, and as the tour guide and chief attraction of Seattle Private Eye Tours. But it is his unsung contribution to the embattled town of McCleary I will focus on.

By the late 1960s, Olson was a pro at garnering publicity for anything. I first saw Olson during the late 1960s/early 1970s during the parade at the McCleary Bear Festival. He was tall, solemn, and dignified as he led a column of miniskirted young beauties, all carrying protest signs expressing outrage at the killing of bears for stew to celebrate the McCleary Bear Festival. The group, which appeared over the course of 5 or so years, was known as "Save Our Bears," or, called by locals, "S.O.B.s."

The S.O.B.s were wonderful for McCleary. The TV coverage of the protests drew record crowds in the late 60s/early 70s, never to be equalled since.

I asked Olson about his role in all of this back in 2002, and here is what he told me:

"Thanks for your interest Steve. That goes back a long time. Is it possible that you were one of the Boy Scouts who were throwing large pieces of bark at our little group of s.o.b.'s? I think not from your letter. That was the only bad memory i had of the McCleary Bear Festival. How did it get started? Well, it all started with saving Namu the whale before he died. I have always been interested in the nature of things. After Namu died i heard about the Bear Festival and how they were killing the bears and cooking them up in a stew pot. I recall some of the loggers had bears chained up to a tree and fattened them with oatmeal before he was cooked. This seemed very unsportsman like, especially for the McCleary natives. The town of McCleary left me with one bad impression. The locals threatened the sob's with McCleary smallpox i.e. the loggers stomp on naked bodies with their cocked boots, and in particular they were talking about my body. The sob's picketed for seven years before moving on to other things. Bye the bye i was really serious about this project but by adding humor i think we accomplished our mission. It was a little shocking to get so much publicity but it helped the cause. I'm glad you are taking an interest, and keep me posted. Windsor Lincoln Olson, Chief S.O.B"

OK. Maybe this is all true. Well, no. A kidder can't kid a kidder. As a result of poking around old McCleary Chamber of Commerce minutes and talking with ex-Simpson employees, I know Olson had some kind of connection with Jerry Johnson, the sparky Simpson Timber Co. PIO at the time (Jerry is also no longer with us, sad to say). It did strike me as interesting that Olson's S.O.B. protest signs looked like they were imprinted with Simpson Co. type of calligraphy. It was a sanctioned protest. And I do recall that when he led his all-attractive-miniskirted-female protesters past the parade spectators, there was an element of extreme ham involved when it came to acting serious. Most of the locals were in on the joke. And it worked. Windsor Olson's protests, as they were designed to do, saved the Bear Festival at a time it really needed it. A little mud soaked town out in the middle of nowhere that would've normally been ignored managed to get big press thanks to Windsor. He didn't have to do it, but something tells me he owed Jerry Johnson a favor. Just a guess.

Goodbye Windsor. You were a true Washington State original.