Obituary: Toby Olson, Longtime Disability Rights Advocate In WA

UNIVERSITY PLACE, WA - One of the state's strongest advocates for disability rights died suddenly on Sunday. Toby Olson has served on the Governor’s Committee on Disability Issues and Employment since the 1980s, and helped pass some 40 laws to expanding rights in the areas of housing, employment, and civil rights.

In 2014, for example, he helped strengthen Washington's laws punishing people who violate handicap parking rules. The law increased fines for misusing a handicapped placard to $450, and makes it a misdemeanor to sell them.

A memorial for Olson, a University Place resident, will be held Jan. 5 at 1 p.m. in the auditorium of Building 2 at Tacoma Community College.

The state Employment Security Department, where Olson worked, released an obituary for him on Thursday morning detailing his legacy:

Toby Olson, Executive Secretary of passed away suddenly on Sunday, Dec. 16.
Housed at the Employment Security Department (ESD), the Governor’s Committee on Disability Issues and Employment promotes equality, opportunity, independence and full participation in life for people with disabilities. Gov. Booth Gardner appointed Olson to his position in 1987.

“This is a great loss for our ESD family, for the disability community and for our state,” said ESD Commissioner Suzan “Suzi” LeVine. “Toby was a kind man and an incredible asset to Washington. He gave deeply of himself to the state’s Disability Inclusion Network as well as many other state and national councils and committees.”

In his 31 years of state service, Olson wrote, co-authored, and secured passage and enactment of more than 40 state laws expanding the rights and opportunities for people with disabilities in such areas as employment, civil rights, education, housing, transportation and healthcare.
He was instrumental in crafting hundreds of policy proposals and initiatives, and obtained critical grant funding for programs to increase individuals’ knowledge of rights and to foster advocacy skills – the most recent of which was the RETAIN grant.

Olson spent his career encouraging public dialogue and actively challenging the preconceptions and stereotypes about people with disabilities in an effort to evoke change.

He is survived by his wife, Rhonda Brown, a review judge for the Employment Security Department’s Commissioner’s Review Office, and son, Averill.

Image courtesy Employment Security Department