Army Spc. Toby R. Olsen

Died January 20, 2007 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

28, of Manchester, N.H.; assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Jan. 20 in Karma, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee.

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N.H. soldier killed in Iraq roadside bombing

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A soldier from Manchester was killed during the weekend in a roadside bombing in Iraq, the Defense Department said Tuesday.

Army Spc. Toby Olsen, 28, was killed Saturday in Karma, Iraq, along with three other soldiers, the department said. A bomb went off near their Humvee.

The soldiers were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, in Fort Richardson, Alaska.

The Defense Department said Olsen lived in Manchester, but relatives said his ties were in Hawaii, where he grew up and graduated from high school.

His parents, James and Lis Olsen, live in Germany, where James Olsen is an Army colonel and eye doctor. His grandparents, John and Hiroko Olsen, live in Wahiawa, Hawaii.

An uncle, Robert Olsen of Mililani, Hawaii, said Olsen was born in Maryland and moved to Hawaii around 1991.

“Hawaii was his home,” Robert Olsen told The Honolulu Advertiser.

Olsen earned an art degree from Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, said another uncle, Larry Beil of San Francisco.

“He was artistic, so gifted in drawing,” Beil said. “The guy could draw like you wouldn’t believe. He wanted to fulfill his military duty and become an art teacher.”

While visiting his parents in Germany during Christmas leave and before he returned to Iraq, Toby Olsen wrote some thoughts:

“I am an artist, I strive to create and enjoy almost nothing more than to sit having all the time and freedom in the world and create,” Olsen wrote. “I hit a point in life though, where my art wasn’t fulfilling anymore, it felt empty.”

So, with a feeling that he had too much freedom, he wrote, he joined the Army.

“Now my time is run by the minute, there is almost no room for creativity. I now conform to ideas instead of imagine, and destroy instead of create,” he wrote. “The contrast thus far has led to a strong resurgence of my former drives and desire to create as well as a newfound level of respect for the freedoms I once had.

“Hope I live long enough to enjoy them again.”

— The Associated Press

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Hawaii soldier killed in Iraq roadside bombing

HONOLULU — Army Spc. Toby Olsen dreamed of being an art teacher and having the time to create his own works of art.

On Saturday, the Mililani High School graduate was killed in Karma, Iraq, along with three other soldiers when a bomb exploded near their Humvee.

“[Toby] was a great kid, 28 years old with his whole life ahead of him,” his uncle Larry Beil said. “He was artistic, so gifted in drawing. The guy could draw like you wouldn’t believe. He wanted to fulfill his military duty and become an art teacher.”

Beil, a television sports anchor in San Francisco and a former sports director at KGMB in Honolulu, recalled he was watching CNN about midnight when the phone rang.

“When you have a family member in Iraq and the phone rings, it’s the worst call you can get,” Beil said.

Olsen died 13 days after he returned to the war zone from a two-week holiday visit with his family in Germany, said another uncle, Robert Olsen, of Mililani.

Toby Olsen’s father, Army Col. James “Mike” Olsen, is an ophthalmologist at the U.S. Army Hospital in Heidelberg.

The holiday marked the first time Toby, his father, mother, Lis, and sister Tanya were together since he joined the Army in late 2005, Robert Olsen said.

He told his family that he joined the Army, in part, because he had too much freedom and wanted more structure, that he had found the urge to create again, he said.

“Now my time is run by the minute; there is almost no room for creativity. I now conform to ideas instead of imagine, and destroy instead of create,” Olsen wrote to his family before returning to war from Christmas leave. “The contrast thus far has led to a strong resurgence of my former drives and desire to create, as well as a newfound level of respect for the freedoms I once had.

“Hope I live long enough to enjoy them again,” he added.

The Savannah College of Art and Design graduate was a “lover of life,” Robert Olsen said.

“We were all proud of him, that he was doing the right thing, but shocked that he won’t be able to fulfill his dreams in life,” Robert Olsen said.

Toby Olsen was based in Fort Richardson, Alaska, and deployed to Iraq in October with the 3rd Battalion, 509 Infantry (Airborne) Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division.

He is also survived by his brother Michael, who works at Leeward Community College, and grandparents John C. and Hiroko Olsen, of Wahiawa.

— The Associated Press