Remembering life through the eyes of our dear Olive: grandmother, mother, wife and friend. May these stories keep her memory alive.
About Our Dear Olive
The point of this site is simple – to retell and honor the stories that defined Olive Spouse’s life. Before she died of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1999, she undertook the process of capturing key moments in her life with the goal of leaving behind a written legacy for her family and friends. That’s what this site will be featuring, life through the eyes of our dear Olive – grandmother, mother, wife and friend. As you’ll see, she was an engaging storyteller who captured life in a real and colorful way. May these stories keep her memory, legacy and love alive.
A Brief Overview of Olive’s Life
Winifred Olive Smith (Olive) was born in Greenwich, London, England on January 13th, 1929. She was an only child and was raised by her mother after her father’s death at age fourteen.
In June 1944, shortly after D-Day, Olive was severely injured when a V-1 flying bomb hit the air-raid shelter she was running to for cover. She was buried in the rubble for over seven hours before being rescued. It took her over a year to fully recover, although she had broken bones that were never repaired and had small pieces of shrapnel in her body for years.
Five years later, on June 25th, 1949, Olive married Harry Spouse (he’s the good looking bloke on her arm in the photo above), and three years later the two became Christians, which would shape their lives from that point forward.
Olive would bear four children: Deborah, Julia, Peter and David. She was a wonderful wife, mother, grandmother and friend: loving, kind, selfless, diligent, generous of heart, and one of the quickest witted people you would ever meet.
One of Olive’s best qualities was her ability to weather life’s tough storms, which served her well when the Spouses moved from England to Canada, back to England, to Canada, then to America, back to England and finally back to America again. As you can probably tell, she was a courageous woman. Also, she was excellent at packing.
Later on in life Olive nursed Harry back from near death to life in 1989, and when she was diagnosed with ALS in 1996, she bore her terrible, incurable illness with great courage and dignity.
Beginning: Between the Two Great Wars
The text herein was taken from a handwritten journal kept by Olive called Treasures of the Heart. It was transcribed into MS Word by Chuck Livingston, and later published online by Peter Livingston in chapters with added historical pictures, finishing on Christmas Day 2014.