Our beloved Richard Arnold Olsen, U.S. Navy Veteran, human factors forensic and design expert, choral singer, inventor, and probably the handiest man you’ve ever met, sailed away peacefully Thursday, November 7, 2024, after bravely living with Alzheimer’s disease. His final years at Vitality Living in Richmond, Virginia were filled with occasional song-singing in his full bass voice and walking through nearby wooded paths, parks, and botanical gardens. He returned often to nature to see ponds, birds, rabbits, squirrels, and marvel at the clouds.
Ric was born in Duluth, Minnesota, November 11, 1933, to Norwegian immigrants, Betzar Henry Jomar Olsen and Hjørdis Elfrida Buck Olsen. He grew up in the house his grandfather, Peter Christopher Buck, built in the early 1920's, with his older brother Phil, and younger sister Karen, until the children were placed in the Northwood Children’s Home in 1938. Ric had contracted rheumatic fever in 1939, so his mother took him back home, while Phil and Karen moved in with Aunt Karen Laura Buck Starch and Uncle Elmer and their family in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Ric was a Lone Scout until about the spring of 1942 when he moved to upstate New York, to Speculator in the Adirondacks in 1944, and later to Amsterdam City in 1949; he progressed from First Class Scout to Eagle Scout when he moved and got to the bigger Wilbur H. Lynch High School, and to the Assistant Scoutmaster level in the Explorer troop there. He graduated high school in 1951, and then from Union College in 1955 with a B.S. in Physics, where he was a 1952 initiate of Sigma Chi and served as chapter cook. He spent a year in graduate school at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. In May 1956, Ric volunteered for the U.S. Navy and was enrolled from June to October in Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Newport, Rhode Island. He was assigned to a Destroyer, the DD-709 Hugh Purvis, in December 1956. Ric was released from active duty in October 1959 and toured Europe including Scandinavia and Trondheim with his mother, Hjørdis in October and November 1959.
After the Navy, he worked for Hughes Aircraft Co. in Fullerton and later San Diego, California from 1960-1962, while living on Balboa Island and then in El Cerrito, where he purchased his first house in June 1962. Ric married Janet Telford in early 1963 in San Jose. They moved to Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania in fall 1964 and he received his M.S. in Experimental Psychology in 1966. Erik was born in 1968, followed by Jake in 1970, the same year Ric received his PhD. in Experimental Psychology with an emphasis in Engineering Psychology. He served as Larson Transportation Institute director of the human factors research program from 1970-1980, and assistant professor of human factors in engineering, in the department of industrial and management systems engineering from 1974-1980, was a 1976 recipient of a Society of Automotive Engineers Ralph R. Teetor Award, and was a visiting scientist at VTI in Linkoping Sweden summer 1977. During his National Aeronautics and Space Administration/American Society for Engineering Education fellowship at Langley Air Force Base, Ric met Beverly Harris Jenkins at a pool party in Virginia in July 1978, and they married on Thursday, June 19, 1980. They moved to Santa Clara, CA by July 22, 1980, in part to allow Erik and Jake to continue their shared custody between two houses. Ric was employed by Lockheed Missiles & Space Company as a human factors engineer specialist, working his way to senior staff engineer; his work included “contributions to early guidelines for computer-human-interaction, and a successful major human factors engineering effort on a large display system program,” with participation in building the first-generation Image Data Exploitation (IDEX I) system, a later version of which is on display at the Udvar Hazy Smithsonian Aerospace Museum, south of the Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
On January 1, 1990, Ric retired from Lockheed, and continued consulting and attending conferences until 2004, having taken on many hundreds of accident investigation and reconstruction cases as an expert witness since his first case in 1977. His forensics work involved traffic accidents and reconstruction and broadened to include farm, industrial, and fall accidents. He was a member of the American Psychological Association, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees involving road user and vehicle characteristics, human factors of vehicles, user information systems, infrastructure design and operations, tort liability and risk management, and visibility. He was also a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) for several decades, including serving as editor of the Forensic Professional Group’s newsletter, The Forvm, and was active with the Bay Area Chapter of HFES. He wrote numerous publications and reports, and had a few humorous publications on the coffee mess, the office stapler system, and he created eight published cartoons.
Among his hobbies and talents, Ric ran track, was in marching band (tuba), orchestra, glee, and chorus. He lasted 2 weeks on the high school football team, had interests in amateur (ham) radio, swimming, snorkeling, SCUBA, etymology, linguistics, and many languages. Ric also played the ukulele, and made a miniature violin as a child while he was sick for several months. Prior to and since retirement, he and Bev traveled extensively both domestically and abroad. Together they enjoyed cruises, tours, wine, and beer tasting. He performed with opera societies on both coasts. Ric also sang with the Sunnyvale Presbyterian Chancel Choir, and then performed and toured with the San José Symphonic Choir for fifteen years. At Vitality Living, he was often seen fixing and exploring and heard “lecturing” or singing full voice. He also had a great sense of humor, loved his puns, and Ric liked to dance too.
We are reminded daily of his impact on our lives: an understanding and deep appreciation for human factors engineering, a discipline that makes for an easier-to-use, safer world; pedestrian conspicuity and visibility; how to solve and fix problems, often with what we already have in the junk drawer; and our blessed lives we have the privilege to lead because of his hard work and stellar example as a husband, teacher, and father. He is survived by his wife, Beverly and children Erik, Jake, Kay, and Steve; grandchildren Loren, Lance, Ian, Jackie, Marty, and Kathryn; as well as sister Karen; along with nephew Phil; and nieces Hjørdis, Erika, and Natalia.
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