John Olson has had many passions in his life, including his wife, Kay, boating and piloting. But nothing has captivated him like passing along the Good Word.

For nearly 40 years, he was a Lutheran pastor in Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota. But Olson, now 90 years old and a resident of Buffalo Hill Terrace in Kalispell, didn’t start out as a preacher. Before he decided to become a man of the cloth, he was an applied engineer for DuPont.

In his research and development lab, Olson worked on projects that started as continuous flow studies for chemicals, but which eventually helped enable the hydrogen bomb in 1949. He left soon after the H-bomb’s development to pursue a different path.

“I’m not sure I want to be part of blowing the world up,” he said of his decision to become a pastor.

The career move also came about in part because of Olson’s experience in Europe in 1947. Olson, who had grown up in a devout Lutheran farmer family in northeast South Dakota, spent that summer touring Germany with a youth group. That’s where he met his future wife, a young woman from near Yankton, S.D.

Olson’s experience in Germany, which included working in a converted slave-labor camp in a small town near Stuttgart, deepened his Christian faith and ultimately helped fuel his decision to leave DuPont.

After leaving his job at the chemical company, Olson went to seminary in St. Paul, Minn., and interned on Montana’s Hi-Line. That’s when he realized he needed to be near the mountains.

His first parish was in Ronan. From there, he moved to Worland, Wyo.; then Irene, S.D.; Wessington Springs, S.D.; and finally to Joplin. Olson retired in 1988 and moved to a cabin he built in Elmo.

Since then, he has served several stints as an interim pastor in places such as Plains and Dillon. He also leads services around the valley on a guest basis and sometimes preaches at Buffalo Hill Terrace, a Lutheran-based community.

His other passions over the years have included boating and flying. Olson built several small boats before trying his hand at an ultralight plane. He got his private pilot’s license and took to the skies.

One of Olson’s most treasured possessions is a clip from the Lake County Leader written when he upended his plane after a five-mile flight. There is a picture of Olson, dazed and with blood on his face, sitting next to his crashed plane.

He was 80 years old at the time.

“If they had allowed me, I would have walked away,” Olson said. “But they kept putting me on a gurney.”

Other people were less amused.

“His doctor said, ‘John, you are 80 years old. You are grounded,’” Kay Olson said.

He may have had to give up flying, but Olson has stayed busy over the last decade.

He enjoys his time with his wife when he can take her down to their lakeside cabin in Elmo. He enjoyed his children and grandchildren traveling to celebrate his 90th birthday on June 26.

Olson has also cultivated a reputation as an all-star bowler at Buffalo Hill Terrace. He is the reigning Wii bowling champion of the building, a fact of which he is quite proud.

“To my knowledge, I’m the only one that had 300 games,” Olson said. “If you asked the others who was the best, they would probably identify me.”

Kay Olson said the battles for supremacy on the Nintendo Wii console can get fierce — or as fierce as friends can be.

“Steve (another resident) asked me to break his wrist,” she said of the strange rivalry.

But his primary passion has remained sharing the gospel. Olson’ favorite Bible verse is telling: “He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.