Kenneth Olmstead, lifetime Hillsdale resident and husband of long-time college employee Sue Olmstead, died of a brain hemorrhage Feb. 6 — a day before what would have been his 65th birthday.
Sue Olmstead has been a much-loved staple of the Hillsdale College staff for 25 years and served the college in various departments, including the Dow Leadership Center, the Trust and Investments office, and, for the past year and a half, Athletic Administration.
Although “Kenny” Olmstead himself was never an employee of Hillsdale, he was always connected to campus through his wife and will be greatly missed by the college staff.
“A lot of people knew him on campus, and a lot of people know Sue on campus,” said Financial Affairs Administrative Coordinator Brenda Sunday, who has worked with Sue Olmstead for more than 20 years. “Most of the people from Central Hall who worked there when she was there would have known Kenny.”
Kenny Olmstead was born and raised in Hillsdale. After graduating from Camden-Frontier High School in 1969, he entered the National Guard, where he served for four years.
“When he came back to Hillsdale, he worked at Hillsdale Tool,” Sue Olmstead said. “And I worked at the office at Hillsdale Tool, and I didn’t know him, so the maintenance guy and the office gal created a blind date. We would have been married 44 years on Feb. 26.”
In 1978, Kenny Olmstead left Hillsdale Tool to begin working as a truck driver. That career would end dramatically, however, in 1996, when a car accident caused severe injuries to his hip, knee, and spine.
“This accident more or less ended his life as it was,” Sunday said. Ironically, according to Sunday, after driving years and years in semi trucks without an accident, it was a simple trip in his personal pickup that would start the string of health troubles Olmstead suffered ever since. “Here he has driven miles and miles and miles and something like that happens.”
“It was a head-on crash on Nov. 1, 1996, in south Hillsdale,” Sue Olmstead recounted. “A young boy in the car driving toward Olmstead bent down to pick up a sucker on the car floor, and the vehicle swerved over the center line. “Nobody was killed, but my husband was in the hospital five and a half months.”
In the intervening years between 1996 and the present, Kenny only continued to undergo health issues, including a brain tumor a year ago and subsequent infections, when his hip replacement hardware made him especially prone to disease.
Even though it was always difficult for Kenny to get around after the injury, he still persisted in making other people happy through his favorite hobby: woodworking.
She said many people on campus own at least one of Kenny Olmstead’s handcrafted pieces of furniture.
“I have a custom-made TV cabinet, and one of the other girls in the office has a chair,” Sunday said.
Despite Olmstead’s continual health problems, he maintained a positive attitude and cheerful spirit throughout all his hardships.
“He was certainly an individual that overcame and adapted to many difficulties in his life,” his daughter-in-law Christi Olmstead said.
“It just amazed me with everything that he was undergoing, that he could still joke around,” Sunday said. “I mean, he was joking with the nurses, he was joking with my husband. It was like, you didn’t know he was in there to be sick, and he just didn’t let that get him down.”
“He was always joking around. That’s why I fell in love with him,” Sue Olmstead said. “A lot of people loved him for that sense of humor.”
The funeral was held at the Van Horn-Eagle Funeral Home in Hillsdale on Feb. 9. Kenny is survived by his wife, his sons Eric and Aaron, seven grandchildren, and many warm friends and acquaintances.
According to Sue Olmstead, the outpouring of support she received following Kenny Olmstead’s death from fellow Hillsdale staff and family friends has been tremendous.
“So many of the neighbors and people who came to see them, he asked them, ‘Take care of Sue,’” Sunday said. “And it’s a given that people are going to be there for her and help her through it.”