Handbook N-P - Fulton County Public Library

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Winston works at General Electric in Fort Wayne as a quality control tester of electric
and electronic controls for commercial and military jet engines.
Becky, a former Time magazine staff member, lives in Sacramento, CA, where she is an
emergency room trauma specialist.
Their mother, Flora, died in 1986, and is buried in Akron’s IOOF cemetery at the side of
her husband.
“Mama and Papa sacrificed so much, and against great odds, to give us four kids the
chance to achieve a better life than the young one with which we started,” Jim Oliver wrote.
The more Jim and I exchanged e-mails, the more convinced I became that the
relationship between father and son was not only very special but one in which their lives ran
parallel many times.
In spite of his father’s advice not to work on the railroad, Jim earned money for college
the same way his father had and graduated with a commission as an Air Force officer.
By the time he retired as a lieutenant colonel, he had, among other assignments, spent a
year in clandestine operations in Vietnam, where the Viet Cong put a $50,000 price on his head
and he earned the Bronze Star. He then spent seven years as a logistics engineer for Martin
Marietta Aerospace, before starting his third career as a freelance writer.
He and his wife, Louise, live in Denver where they are currently working on books about
his childhood during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, his year-long special operations
assignment in Vietnam and “The Best of the Jeb and Maizie Gazette,” a selection of essays written
for a retirement community’s newsletter. In their spare time, they have visited Australia, Hong
Kong, China, Alaska, Purtugal, Spain, South America, Egypt and Japan, often without realizing
they were tracing routes Reece Oliver followed years earlier.
But, while their travel plans for 2000 include trips to Holland, the Danube River, Berlin,
the World’s Fair in Hanover, Germany, and the Antarctic, they don’t include the Philippines.
“My wife and I planned to visit Davao in 1993 as a ‘sentimental journey,’ “ Jim says,
“but we decided against it when I learned that a local ‘hobby’ is to kidnap American or Chinese
businessmen and hold them for ransom”
The headhunters of his father’s early days are gone, but they’ve been replaced by
Muslims from the south, specifically from Celebes to the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao, who
have killed more than 65,000 people over the past 25 years. In spite of a peace agreement signed
five years ago, he says reports persist of roving bands of rebels.
Although he says he has never tried to emulate his father, he, too, has noted the
similaities. “I have never met another man like him,” he says simply.
And, as his father may have said years ago, he adds, “I’m very grateful that my cup
runneth over, but I still ponder there’s a bigger cup somewhere....”
[Rochester Sentinel, Wednesday, August 9, 2000 and Wednesday, August 16, 2000]
OLIVER HOTEL [Fulton, Indiana]
RIVALS SOUTH BEND
Ivan Oliver of Fulton has purchased the Fulton hotel and changed its name to “The
Oliver.”
[Rochester Sentinel, Friday, March 19, 1915]
OLIVER SAWMILL [Liberty Township]
The Oliver Sawmill evidently received that name because it was located on the west side
of the Michigan Road across from the Oliver Farm. It apparently was in operation in the late 1880’
or early 90’s, probably after my great-grandfather’s death. My father Alvin Oliver as a lad of