Sigma Chi Alumni Chapter of Fresno

Archives for August 2021

The History of the Allen Barr Olson Endowment

Allen Barr Olson was initiated into Sigma Tau at Fresno State. In the 1936/1937 Sigma Tau Booklet he was pictured at a homecoming event and was referred to as “Barr” Olson.

On April 22, 1953 the president and secretary of the Sigma Chi Association, the name of our alumni association at that time, signed an agreement with the Fresno State College Alumni Association to create an endowment in the name of Allen Barr Olson, and they provided a $120 cash contribution. The signatures on the trust document were Sigma Chi alumni president Robert G. (Bud) Fisher (52-T) and secretary Richard (Dick) H. Swartz (52-T). This initial contribution, combined with the White Rose and Allen Barr Olson scholarship funds, would eventually become the largest fraternal scholarship endowment in the CSU System. 

On October 30, 1975 a woman named Irene Josephine “Jo” Olson bequeathed to the Fresno State College Alumni Trust Council a portion of her estate to be used as a scholarship in the name of Allen Barr Olson, a member of Sigma Tau, but now Sigma Chi. The actual amount of the bequest was not stated, but was to be one-half of the “residue” of the estate.

Genealogy research by Rob Bell (95-F) – Allen Barr Olson (“Barr” Olson) was born in Sanger, CA in 1914. He was heavily involved in Sanger High activities, having played football and tennis, being a member of the school’s chorus, orchestra, theatre, stage crew, and serving as business manager for the school yearbook. Foreshadowing Brother Olson’s membership in Sigma Chi, he was also involved in Sanger High’s “Hi-V” Boys’ Club, whose purpose was to “raise the moral standards of the boys, and through them, the school’s.”

In 1932, Brother Olson attended Fresno State and joined the Sigma Tau Fraternity. After college, he started working as a salesman for his grandfather’s business in Exeter, Barr Packing Co. He was best man in his sister, Jane Olson’s, wedding to Brother Charles Hightower (T-52) in 1938, with groomsmen Alfred Appling (T-52), Ellsworth Cox (T-52), Gareth Gillis (T-52) and Darwin Knapp (T-52) also in attendance. Four years later, Barr joined the Navy where he served on the USS Heed in the South Pacific until the war’s end in 1945.

In 1948, Barr married Irene Josephine “Jo” Turner.  Clearly, the fraternity was important to Brother Olson because in the marriage announcement it highlighted the fact that he was “a member of Sigma Tau Fraternity.” 

The Olsons lived in Washington where he was a manufacturer’s representative for the Don Morrill Company, and she was a school teacher. Interestingly, Jo Olson was also a WWII & Korean War Air Force veteran, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before retirement.

Twenty years after joining Sigma Tau, Barr and his younger brother John Anthony Olson (T-52) were initiated into the Sigma Chi Fraternity in 1952 at the Chapter’s Installation. He and his wife, Jo, intended to eventually move back to Sanger. But he was tragically killed at the age of 45 after being hit by a vehicle while removing a friend’s snow chains on Steven’s Pass Highway, 30 miles east of their Seattle home.

Barr and Jo had no children. And Jo never remarried. On October 30, 1975, aware of her declining health, Jo Olson bequeathed 1/6 of her and Barr’s estate to the Fresno State College Alumni Trust Council to be used as a scholarship in the name of Allen Barr Olson, who she identified in her will as a “member of Sigma Tau Fraternity, now Sigma Chi.” Clearly, the significance of the Fraternity had been conveyed and appreciated by his widow, who made certain to honor both her husband’s memory and his Fraternity through a perpetual scholarship.

At the time of the will, Jo was still living in King County, Washington, and she requested that she be buried in Sanger Cemetery next to her husband Allen Barr Olson. All Honor To His Name.

The scholarship funds lay dormant at Fresno State but they continued earning interest. In 1987 or 1988, Constantine Sig Brother Dave Reuland (69-F) was Chapter Advisor and Brother Kyle Stephenson (72-F) was a board member of the Fresno State Alumni Association. At one of the meetings someone asked the board if anyone had a contact with the Sigma Chi alumni, and Kyle became aware of the endowment. He contacted Dave who began giving small annual scholarships to undergraduate brothers. On several occasions Jane Hightower, sister of Brother Barr and spouse of Brother Charles, presented the checks to the students on Parents Day.


Dave Reuland

Time passed and as of June 2020, the Allen Barr Olson Scholarship Fund of 1975 totaled more than $139,000 and provided $5,000 in scholarships to our undergraduate brothers for the 2020/2021 school year. Which leads to the old expression, Never underestimate the power of compound interest.

Elvin Bell Gives Us “the Whole Nine Yards”

From the Fresno Bee OpEd August 12, 2021 by Significant Sig Elvin C. Bell (57-F):

Mixed in with all the news about gun violence nationally has been a dramatic rise this year in shootings in Fresno, which continues to climb with the daily news. Is there a genesis for this nationwide gun violence? I believe there is a specific date when this criminality unfolded in such an abrupt manner and quickly spread to numerous cities across our nation. I also remember the specific time I was alerted to the crisis.

The bedside telephone awakened me at 2:50 a.m. on Aug. 12, 1965. The conversation was brief. “Councilman Bell, are you also a captain and the intelligence officer for the National Guard’s 185th Infantry Battalion?” “Yes.” “Well, sir, an airplane will land at the Fresno terminal in about 15 minutes,” the voice announced. “It will fly you to Los Angeles. There’s an emergency. Your battalion will follow by ground convoy.”


Colonel Elvin C. Bell

“What’s the problem?” I asked. “We have a riot on our hands. You will be escorted by police to the Fresno air terminal, and the California Highway Patrol will escort you to the riot scene when you land at LAX. Hurry.” The line went dead. That was my introduction to the Watts Riots that started 56 years ago on the evening of Aug. 11, 1965. At the age of 27, I was elected to the City Council four months earlier.

With lights flashing and siren howling, we made it to the airport tarmac in record time. An olive drab Army aircraft was waiting for me. I tossed my utility bag and web gun belt in back and rode shotgun beside the pilot. As we cleared the Tehachapi Mountains and looked southwest, we saw multiple flames as the sky ahead of us glowed in an eerie, ominous hellish display. “It’s much worse now than when I left to get you,” the pilot said. “I’ll let your CHP escort know you’ll be on the ground in 12 minutes,” he said as he contacted the LAX tower.

My escort consisted of four heavily armed CHP officers. Each, including the driver, had a shotgun pointed out of a rolled down window. A few hundred other CHP cars were visible during our quick journey to the law enforcement bivouac site, Manual Arts High School, which was located in the center of flaming Watts. The intelligence information and briefing I received in the back seat of a speeding heavily armed car was clear and crisp: In the predominately Black Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, racial tension reached a breaking point when a young Black motorist was pulled over and arrested by a white CHP patrolman for suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Within a few minutes, a crowd of angry spectators gathered at Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street to watch the arrest. As the throng grew larger, their anger increased and soon rocks were hurled at the officer, and storefronts were set on fire. I immediately started my intelligence gathering patrol work with CHP officers, and worked with them until my battalion convoy arrived. In the meantime, I also went to the map lab in the L.A. police headquarters and had the technicians print several copies of large maps that clearly identified each building within a quarter mile radius of our bivouac site. It didn’t take long for me to discover that our Manual Arts bivouac makeshift outpost was surrounded by snipers.

I deployed a 30-caliber machine gun on the roof of the girls’ gym and gave the gun team a field of fire that covered two blocks. I also gave them several nine-yard belts of ammo. (Thus, the popular phrase, “The whole nine yards”). I also deployed a 50-caliber machine gun with ammo belts on the roof of the boys’ gym. During my frequent reconnaissance patrols during the next eight days and nights, I witnessed the death of 23 armed rioters; 1,132 who were injured during assaults on officers; more than 600 buildings damaged from fires or looting; 232 buildings destroyed; 3,522 people arrested; and more than $65 million in property loss recorded. Another interesting element that troubled the CHP occurred during those eight days was the high number of out-of-state residents who arrived in Los Angeles via air and bus who were picked up and taken directly into houses in Watts. During that era, travelers were not subjected to body or luggage searches. Because of my intelligence work during the Watts riot, which included a bullet wound above my left knee, the Department of Defense sent me to assist at several subsequent riots in Detroit, Newark, Chicago, Berkeley and East Orange, NJ.


Colonel Elvin C. Bell

That was why, on occasion, I attended Fresno City Council meetings in uniform; a plane was waiting for me at the airport.

Elvin C. Bell served five terms in public office in Fresno. He is a retired Air Force colonel after more than 31 years of service in the Army National Guard, Army, Air Guard and Air Force.