On Friday, August 20, 2021, Alice (Ollie) Royer, adventurer, traveler, nurse and mother, passed away. She was 78. Ollie was born in Ithaca, New York, to Catharine & Henry Detweiler. After graduating from high school, where she was Concert Master – she was a skilled violin player – she moved to Seattle in 1960 and went to the University of Washington where she studied Classics and Oceanography. Ollie met her first husband, Victor Case, in 1962, and had her first child, Michael in 1965. She was a Latin and Greek teacher in those days, rode a motorcycle and traveled the world with Mike, before returning to land in the Skagit Valley, where she found a house on Fir Island in Skagit County. Ollie met her second husband, Brian Royer in 1970 and they lived on a commune and then moved into a small house on Clear Lake, where her daughter Noelle was born in 1976. She became a Registered Nurse at Skagit Valley College and then she and her family moved to Curlew, Washington, in 1977. Ollie and Brian built a house, went back to the land and enjoyed having her sister Molly as a nearby neighbor. She worked in the Ferry County hospital as an RN. In 1984 Ollie returned to Western Washington and continued her nursing work. She was a nurse in many countries, too, on her vacations from work, including Australia, Honduras, Burma and Laos through the years. Ollie traveled to all of the continents on this planet, climbing mountains, scuba diving, hiking or rafting rivers. She broke both elbows at different times and had the privilege of getting airlifted out of the Grand Canyon after a rafting accident.
Ollie learned to scuba dive while in college in the 1960s and decided to learn again in Honduras in the 1990s. Scuba diving took her to many locations around the world, often with her daughter, Noelle. In the 1990s Ollie frequently traveled to work by bicycle and was Cascade Bicycle Club’s Commuter of the Month one month in 2001. She learned to kayak and raft white water rivers in the Western USA in the late 1990s and rode rivers in her cata-raft until 2017. Ollie climbed Mt Baker in 1999 with her niece Susan and was always up for an adventure, be it in the salt water, fresh water or the mountains.
Ollie was active in political and social causes throughout her life and encouraged activism and intellectual pursuits in both of her children. She never hesitated to tell anyone her opinion on things great or small. She was an avid reader and the first in her immediate family to get a tattoo.
Ollie retired from teaching in the early 70s and then later on she retired from working at Harborview Medical Center in the 2000s and finally retired more fully in 2012 after working for Providence Hospice and Home Healthcare. This allowed her to travel more freely!
Ollie was able to see both of her children get married and celebrate their partnerships.
Ollie was diagnosed with Dementia in 2016 and moved into assisted living in 6/2018. She moved to Burien to be closer to her kids in December 2019. She moved into Memory Care in January 2021 and moved under the care of Providence Hospice (ably assisted by the staff at the Garden House) in March 2021. Ollie passed away on 8/20/21.
Ollie is survived by her children Michael (Barbie) Case and Noelle (Holger) Lindenmann; siblings John H. (Sylvia) Detweiler, Katie (Del Langbauer) Bunnell and Molly (David Robinson) Detweiler; nieces & nephews Susan Detweiler, Corrie Detweiler, Amy (Adam Wiener) German, Ross (Meredith) German, Catharine Robinweiler and Alex (Beth) Robinweiler. Ollie was preceded in death by both of her parents, Catharine & Henry Detweiler, and her first husband, Victor Case.
If you would like to honor Ollie with a donation, here are a few that would honor her and her family:
Planned Parenthood of the Great NW, Hawaii, Alaska, Kentucky & Indiana
End of Life Washington
Pasado's Safe Haven
Southern Poverty Law Center