Merrill S. Olson was born on June 30, 1916. After graduating from Southside High School, he entered the Air Corps in June, 1942, and went overseas in 1943. As pilot of B-24 Liberator 44-40092 ‘Betty Jane’ on a bombing mission to Misburg on September 11,1944, he bailed out north of Amsterdam and went in hiding with help of the Dutch resistance. While trying to escape to the liberated southern Nethrlands, he was arrested by the Germans on December 24, 1944 and spend the remainder of the war in a German PoW camp.
Merrill Olson died in a car accident on April 12, 1949 and is buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery at Elmira, New York.