Lee Olm and Elizabeth Olm 2076 Endowed Scholarship

Lee Olm was born July 17, 1928 in Appleton, Wisconsin to Frederick J. W. Olm and Ada Barbara Eureka Grebe Olm. The family lived in nearby Kaukauna. Dr. Olm has two brothers and a sister. While working at St. Johns public school system, he met and married the local English and Latin teacher, Elizabeth Barrett Schafer. Elizabeth “Belle” Olm was born in Tonkawa, Oklahoma and raised in Moline, Illinois. She received her B.A. degree from Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa. She taught for a few years in Iowa and Minnesota before arriving at St. Johns for the 1953 academic year. In 1959, Lee accepted, sight unseen, an assistant professorship of History at Sam Houston State College in Huntsville, Texas. He and Mrs. Olm lived in a Quonset hut, originally part of a World War II prisoner of war camp some 10 miles east of Huntsville. President Lowman had purchased Country Campus “from the government after the war for $1.00.” For a time, it was an active adjunct campus with classrooms, cattle, student and faculty housing, et al. After Lee’s first year at Sam Houston, he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1960. In 1964, he was promoted to Full Professor. Around 1977, he was designated “Distinguished University Professor” by the Sam Houston Administration. When the department chair retired, Dr. Olm was appointed chair in 1976. He served as the chair for 12 years before taking early retirement in 1988. He continued to teach part-time. Throughout Dr. Olm ’s long tenure at Sam Houston, he contributed to many important developments in his department, the college and the university. These scholarships are being established to embrace and commemorate the untimely death of SHSU professors of history: Dr. Joan Coffey, Dr. Milford Allen, Dr. John Payne, Dr. Terry Bilhartz, and Dr. Tracy Steele, and all departed department faculty-past, present, and future.