Frank Olsheski was an incredibly popular teacher who taught industrial arts at Interlake between 1968 and 1984, and was named “1982 Educator of the Year” by the Washington Industrial Arts Association. He died on May 22, 1984, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. A year later, a tribute to him (which you can see below) was printed in the 1985 IHS yearbook.
Mr. Olsheski’s death at such a young age (he was only forty-one when he died) was something a lot of students from that era never forgot. In fact, the classes of 1979 through 1984 later collaborated on a SECOND memorial to the beloved “Mr. O.” A tiled mosaic of the IHS school crest was laid down in the school foyer (see picture, below) in his honor.
This mosaic was later relocated into the foyer of the new building when Interlake underwent campus renovations in the early 2000’s. A Seattle Times article about the school’s memorials talks about Mr. Olsheski’s mosaic.
