Op Images: Sharing stories of state’s atheist, pacifist governor

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Culbert Olson, an atheist, is sworn in as governor in 1939 with a hand in his pocket rather than on a Bible. Courtesy of Debra Deanne Olson

By Dan Morain
01/23/2015 4:00 PM
Updated: 01/24/2015 12:00 AM

Culbert Olson is one of the men whose framed portraits occupy the Capitol walls, a largely forgotten though significant figure in California history.

Olson was a different sort of governor, as his granddaughter, Debra Deanne Olson, is endeavoring to show. She is a Los Angeles political activist and friend of Hillary Clinton’s, a liberal like the old man.

In an event sponsored by the California State Library and California Archives, she came to town this week to give a slide show to an audience of a few dozen people, and tell a few tales about her grandfather, who died in 1962.

Olson was part of Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty In California movement, a New Deal Democrat and the first Democrat elected governor in the 20th century.

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article8038305.html#storylink=cpy