ERIE — Carl E. Olson, 98, a lifelong resident of the rural Erie area, died at 10:45 a.m. Sunday, April 10, 2011, at Prairie Mission Retirement Village in St. Paul.

He was born June 3, 1912, on a farm near his present farm, to Nels A. and Dessie M. (Clemans) Olson. He graduated from the Erie High School in 1931.

Throughout his life he farmed and raised cattle. He was always on the cutting edge of farming techniques and was the first in his neighborhood to have a combine and an automatic hay baler. In the early 1930s, during the Depression, he worked in the winter months on pipeline construction in the oil fields of Texas. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he operated Olson’s Sales and Rentals, selling and renting campers.

On Aug. 13, 1934, he married Jewell Lyon at Neosho, Mo. She preceded him in death on Dec. 17, 1989. He married Imogene Williams at Grandview, Mo., on Jan. 29, 1992. She preceded him in death on Sept. 17, 2003.

Mr. Olson was a member of the Friends Home Lutheran Church and for the past 25 years attended the Evangelical Covenant Church. He was a member of the National Rifle Association and had been an avid hunter throughout his life. He hunted deer in New Mexico, Arkansas, Colorado and Kansas. He was an active conservationist and always desired to improve the land.

He had visited Sweden, the birthplace of his father, three times.

Survivors include a son, Ronald Olson of rural Erie; a daughter, Laura Lee Keller of Erie; a stepdaughter, Judy Johnson of Ottawa; seven grandchildren, Rhonda Dubach of Wichita, Robin Stricklin of Weir, Valerie Engstrom of Erie, Lisa Purdon of Brooklyn, N.Y., Craig Purdon of Bangkok, Thailand, Nicole Thorp of Englewood, Colo., and Jason Keller of Topeka; two stepgrandchildren; nine great-grandchildren, Brianna and Aaron Dubach, Marina and Daria Stricklin, Kyle and Kendra Engstrom, Coy Garrett and Lilly and Peter Purdon; and three stepgreat-grandchildren.

He was also preceded in death by two brothers, Brice Olson and Virgil Olson; and five sisters, Bertha Libby, Myrtle Bass, Elsie Carlson, Iva Bohlander and Pauline Page.

The service will be at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Evangelical Covenant Church at Savonburg with burial to follow in the Odense Cemetery. The family will receive friends at the Pierce-Carson-Wall Funeral Home in Erie from 6 to 8 p.m. today.

Memorials are suggested to either the Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center Foundation (to benefit the hospital nurses), the Prairie Mission Retirement Village Activity Fund or a charity of the donor’s choice. They may be left at the funeral home or sent to P.O. Box 182, Erie, 66733.

Online condolences may be left at www.wallfuneralservices.com.