Founder of charity network faces cancer in good spirits

• Network thrived under Ivy Olson's leadership

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Religion and Ethics Writer

Ivy Olson, co-founder of the nonprofit Angel Network Charities, is enduring a hardship of her own: She is in stage four of cancer. But she is facing it with an admirable spirit. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Coming to terms with the end of her life.

Her cancer, with pain that at times clangs like cymbals, is reaching its end stages.

But she is facing it with the same fervency of spirit she discovered more than 30 years ago.

A miracle of a meal

Divorced and days from payday, Olson had taken her two sons to the park for a Thanksgiving dinner of three hot dogs. On the way home, her boys said they were still hungry.

"I didn't even know where my next meal was coming from," she recalled.

As they approached their apartment building, a woman came out and said, "Oh, honey! I've been waiting for you!"

Years later, she's still amazed at how the empathy in the "Oh, honey!" soothed her, meaning even more than the meal the stranger insisted she and her children share. As they ate to their heart's content, she revealed her heavy heart to the kind stranger. They left lighter in spirit, but packed with leftovers.

When Olson went to return the containers, the apartment was empty. No one had lived there in months, the manager said.

Writers from "Touched by an Angel" wrote her story into the TV show early in its run.

The beginnings of a mission

That experience was a tap on the shoulder from God, Olson said. The registered nurse knew she was being called to help others, first simply, in her "stone soup days" in San Diego: She and other divorced mothers would help each other out in small ways, banding together to listen to each others' troubles and feed one another's children.

Then she met and fell for Doug Olson, pastor of Calvary-by-the-Sea Lutheran Church, during a Hawai'i vacation in 1975.

He was being ornery, he recalls, tangling with her friends as she watched. As he walked away, she directed an obscene gesture toward him — and he turned around in time to catch her.

"I knew she was a woman of substance," he said, and he knew then he was smitten.

On their first date, she knew he was her destiny, too. She called her friends back in San Diego to say they should take what they wanted of her belongings and ship the rest to Hawai'i.

Together, they raised a multitude of children: six of his, two of hers, 10 calabash. Their home always held an assortment of strays, both furry and human.

Eventually, their mission grew: They founded Angel Network in 1989.

It mushroomed, becoming a $700,000-a-year nonprofit serving more than 100 families on two islands, dedicated to offering the hungry and the homeless a leg up. After 18 months, clients are expected to live independently. The organization provides housing, health care, transportation, education and job training, but also what Olson calls the most important thing: friendship.

Olson was contacted by then-President Bush and told Aug. 16, 1992, had been proclaimed Angel Network Day — and that she was being chosen as one of Bush's "Thousand Points of Light."

She continued her mission, full-bore, for a decade. Then came the only thing that could curtail her.

Cancer.

The diagnosis

Olson was helping with Angel Network's summer blowout sale on Aug. 19, 2000, when she suffered intense pain in her abdomen. After immediate surgery for colon cancer, she thought she had beaten the disease.

But her energy never returned to its previous level, and a subsequent test showed problems.

She went in for another operation Sept. 12. Doctors found hundreds of polyps and gave her six months to live.

It wasn't easy for Olson to find that her second bout is expected to be her last.

"Medical people are the worst patients of all," she said, angry that at age 50, she hadn't gotten a routine colonoscopy.

If she has a medical mission at this moment, it's urging people to insist their insurance companies pick up the cost of colonoscopy as a diagnostic and preventive tool.

Life after cancer

The couple call their airy abode "Heaven's Haven." Right now, eight people live in the house, its big picture windows framing views out to the coast.

From her "throne," a blue-tweed recliner that looks out on an East Honolulu hillside, she bounces through the stages of her grief.

There's raging: Why now, when she and her husband were so close to retirement? There's bargaining: Can't she make it to August, not February? There's the profound sadness of leaving her family.

Within arm's reach of her are a basket of books. The whirling dervish that is Larla, a chihuahua-terrier mix whose name means "little darling" in Hindustani, is always nearby.

She lives an "attitude of gratitude," and remembers acutely the day she thanked God that she still has her eyesight and that she could still read.

On a side table to her left is a miniature statue, "the angel of comfort," a gift from her son.

Important to 'let go'

God, she says, keeps sending things for her to learn. What she learns, she passes on, talking to other women who are going through similar experiences.

"It's not that I'm saying 'Thank you for the cancer,' but if I can, I'm going to help someone understand, or let others know it's OK to cry, and its all right to feel sometimes, 'OK, God, this is a dirty trick,'" she said.

Ivy is trying to teach Doug things while she can. Like how to clean up after making a sandwich, so ants don't invade.

"She's worried about me, and rightfully so," her husband said. "I have serious doubts about living without her."

There are times when he rages, alone in his car, in front of the house before heading to work.

"All I want to do is just go back inside and hold her hand," he said.

One lesson she and her husband learned is carpe diem, the Latin phrase that means "seize the day."

"Yes, save for retirement, but by God, have fun, too," she said.

She still buys herself shoes, though she probably won't be wearing them for long. And she's thinking she and her husband may take a cruise if she's feeling better.

When they realized this was terminal cancer, they sat down to make a list of what they wanted to do before time ran out. After laughing and reminiscing, Doug remembers looking at the paper.

"There was nothing on it," he said, adding: "We're not entitled to regrets."

Doug, 70, is due to retire in April: "I was sure I would predecease her. ... I'm not good at handling households. She could run GM — I'm not kidding — and still have time for Angel Network."

But in the quiet moments, his wife flashed on why it was important for her to "let go" — complete with a gesture of raising her arms to the heavens (so worries can run off your elbows, she'll tell you).

Her purpose now is to savor her loved ones, she said. "I'm home with all the stuff that kept me going.

"I'm here to listen to my granddaughter play the piano. To listen to my son telling me about his day. (Doug and I) have time for devotions, laughing, talking. I'm bringing more peace into the house."