CASPER — There is a tree in a Casper neighborhood with roots that run deeper than any observer can see — straight to the memory of a mother who never gave up on the tree or on life despite all the storms that blew her way.
Casper resident Rena Olsen, now a Georgia-based author, uses the tree as an analogy when sharing a story about her late mother Maxine Landrum Thaxton’s sense of joy and resilience during a lifetime of challenges. Her mother’s last hurdle was Alzheimer’s disease.
Olsen chose to use a children’s book titled “Maxine’s Joy” to carry the lesson.
“My mom had Alzheimer’s, and I lost her really quite young,” Olsen said. “If you’ve ever loved someone who has Alzheimer’s, it’s hard for the patient of course, but really hard for the families.
“I was in the midst of a career and having kids and I never really had a chance to do anything to honor her life.”
Now a self-described “philanthropy evangelist,” Olsen said she had started a podcast that focuses on encouraging others to get engaged in volunteering, serving, and giving to make a difference in other’s lives.
She found herself talking about her mom and the disease that took her.
Olsen realized that she needed to do something to honor her mom’s life and accomplish philanthropy while doing it.
Once Olsen “got quiet,” she said she started contemplating her mom and realized it was her mother’s “joy that made her most special.”
“Maxine’s Joy” is Rena Olsen's philanthropic project to honor her late mother. (Courtesy Rena Olsen) 
Rena Olsen talks about her book and the reason for it on a YouTube video – she is giving away all sale for the book to Alzheimer’s Disease causes (Courtesy Rena Olsen) 
A page from “Maxine’s Joy” depicting the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. (Courtesy Rena Olsen) 
A page from “Maxine’s Joy” depicting the blue spruce tree many years after Maxine nourished it after a hailstorm. (Courtesy Rena Olsen) 
There is a tree in a Casper neighborhood with roots that run deeper than the Alzheimer’s that eventually took the woman who grew up there. They follow the memories of a mother named Maxine who never gave up on the tree or on life. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Choosing Kid’s Book
Olsen, who has a background in writing and communications, decided to pursue a children’s book about her mom and use the proceeds to benefit Alzheimer’s patients and their families.
What she thought would be simple with artificial intelligence doing the illustrations turned into an eight-month project with an India-based artist using photos that Olsen supplied to come up with scenes to illustrate Olsen’s words.
The result is 38 pages of colorful drawings that show Maxine as a baby born into rural poverty in Oklahoma and being taken into the cotton fields and placed on a flour sack.
Olsen said she chose to depict her mom’s joy through the illustration of a radiating heart that varies in size as her joy grows or is challenged by struggles in life.
Depicting her mom as a baby required artist Kompal Rana to imagine her as a tot from photos of Olsen’s mom in later years, Olsen said.
The book shows readers how her mom experienced the Dust Bowl and had to leave school to help her family in the cotton fields.
She married at 16 to a soldier who went off to war. They had a baby, and she moved on her own to Delaware with the baby to live at his military base.
“Luckily, my dad survived the war. He was a mechanic who worked on planes,” Olsen said.
The main message in the pages is that her mother maintained joy throughout her life.
“Somehow in finding that path protecting her joy, knowing that better days were coming, I benefited from that as one of four children,” Olsen said. “My children benefited from that.”
Olsen characterizes her mother as a simple woman who loved to garden, was a homemaker who raised and loved her four children and her pets and viewed life with a positive attitude.
The Tree
A story in the book includes an incident where Olsen remembers returning to her Paradise Valley neighborhood in Casper after a severe hailstorm swept through in the late 1970s.
Her home’s windows were boarded up because the hail broke them and her mom’s blue spruce tree in the front yard was pummeled and looked like a stick in the ground.
Olsen said her mother loved the tree and had been treating it “like her baby.”
“She saw that the tree was still alive, and she started nursing that thing back to life. The neighbors would be like, ‘Give up on it, Max,’” Olsen said. “And she wouldn’t.
“That tree still stands in Casper and it is, like, 40-feet tall and every time I visit, we take a picture.”
In the book, the tree is depicted on several pages and finally as the 40-foot tree towering over a home as a “living testament to Maxine’s joy.”
Olsen writes that her mom’s joy grew every time she “gave it away.”
The book teaches in its final pages that while Alzheimer’s took Maxine’s memory and weakened her body, it could not touch her joy that remains living in her children, grandchildren, and others she touched over the years.
The tree plays a prominent part as a focus of her mom’s joy and being a home for cardinals that “represent hope, joy and some even say a loved one who has passed.”
Taking a tough subject like Alzheimer’s and putting it in a children’s book Olsen hopes will help kids learn about resilience and “not to be crushed when someone says something mean to them.”
“Culture teaches us to chase happiness, but though happiness feels good for a while, it is fleeting,” Olsen said. “Joy is something deeper and it comes from within, so it’s helping them understand the difference between the two.”
Olsen said the book also can speak to parents about maybe simplifying their lives and not missing out on the joys of parenting.
While her mother struggled dealing with her disease, Olsen said her mom retained her sense of humor and her joy until her death at 72 in 1997. She never became angry.
Philanthropy Drum
Olsen hopes her efforts to turn the book into philanthropy by donating all proceeds to Alzheimer’s charities can be an example to others.
Olsen said the root of philanthropy is the love of humanity and she has now made it her life’s goal to “beat the drum” and teach others that philanthropy is not just for rich people.
“I had a chance to work with a nonprofit here in Atlanta that serves a rural village in Tanzania in eastern Africa. So, putting boots on the ground in Africa changed me in a lot of ways,” she said.
Olsen spent most of her school years in Casper and graduated from the University of Wyoming. She said she annually visits the area but does not miss the windy winter weather.
Olsen said she also has been trying to make contact with the family who now live in the home where her mom saved the tree. She hopes to be able to deposit something special there when she visits.
“I’ve got a tree marker that I’ve had made that says, ‘Maxine’s Tree,’” she said.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
