Helen Olsen Papers, 1939-2002

Helen Olsen was born in Parma, Idaho, on April 12, 1914, the daughter and only child of Frank Lynch and his wife Pearl (Mussell) Lynch. Her father was the railroad station agent at Parma; her mother was the daughter of Jacob Mussell, Owyhee County pioneer and operator of a ferry on the Snake River. After working in Yakima and Walla Walla, Washington, Frank Lynch resigned from the railroad in 1917. The family lived in Twin Falls, Idaho, until 1926, when they moved to San Diego, California. Helen Lynch graduated from high school in San Diego in 1932, then moved back to Idaho to live on her maternal grandparents' homestead in the Central Cove community, Canyon County. She married Cloyd Olsen, who grew up on an adjacent ranch, in 1935. Together they operated a fruit orchard and became the parents of a daughter and a son. In 1956 Helen Olsen went to work for the J.R. Simplot Company in Caldwell, Idaho, as a clerk typist. She retired in 1979 as division personnel manager. During the 1950s she served as clerk for the Central Cove school district and was active for many years in the Idaho Writers League and its Caldwell chapter. She lived in Central Cove (post office Wilder). Mrs. Olsen passed away on September 10, 2003.

Helen Olsen wrote poems, short stories, radio plays, and filler pieces, but she was most successful in seeing her poetry in print. In a short essay entitled "Reader's Revolt," she described herself as a "magazine freak," and her poetry did indeed appear in a wide variety of magazines, from The Catholic Home Journal to Cosmopolitan. Other poems and filler pieces appeared in publications as diverse as Country Gentleman, Gourmet, Arizona Highways, the Wall Street Journal, the National Enquirer, and Ford Truck Times. The earliest poems in the collection date from the 1930s. The collection also contains correspondence with other authors (including two letters from Vardis Fisher and several from Professor Frank H. O'Hara of the University of Chicago) and, as in the papers of most writers, rejection letters as well as acceptances.