Elsons are Honored OBF Couple

Tom and Janie Elson were elated to hear they are this year’s Lindsay Orange Blossom Festival Honored Couple.
“It’s very nice, quite an honor, but we were thinking we were too young,” Tom Elson said, laughing. “We’re both 63, and I think most of the honored couples have been in their seventies. We’re starting a younger trend.”

Their story, according to Janni Denni, one of the organizers, is reminiscent of the boy meets girl beach romance movies of the late sixties.

Tom was a lifeguard and Janie the camp counselor.

After a year and a half they married in Santa Ana. Tom completed his masters in Divinity at Fuller theological Seminary and Janie continued to studies at the School of Psychology at the same school.

After seven years in Salinas, they both decided it was time to choose a community where they could raise their family, preferably near the mountains and family in Southern California. They wanted to establish deep roots, meet new families and share in their joys and challenges in a meaningful way.

Lindsay was the perfect fit, they said. They arrived here in 1980 and settled in.

They have two sons. Mark is a graduate of LHS and Stanford University where he continued on to received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He is married to Jeannie and they have two boys, Otto and Anders.
Their second son, Jon, was also a graduate of LHS and attended the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation he moved on to the University of Davis, School of Law. Presently, he is working as an attorney. He and his wife Sruti are the parents of Devan and 9-month-old Shalini.

Tom and Janie said they are so grateful they “live close enough for occasional grand children fixes.”

The couple is celebrating 40 years of marriage this week, and will be celebrating with a few days in Palm Springs.
They both have done a great deal for the Lindsay Community. Tom helped establish a non-profit organization to provide a computer camp for youngsters of Lindsay.
Tom has coached soccer and basketball, participated in numerous Lindsay Community Theater productions. He has served on the Lindsay Strathmore Coordinating Council, Lindsay Prison Committee, LHS Boosters Club and the Ministerial Association. He has worked to understand the needs and desires of this community and the people who love this town.

Currently he is teaching the New Testament philosophy and ethics at both Fresno State and College of the Sequoia’s.

“I’m also the pastor of the Lindsay Presbyterian Church and the Exeter Pentecostal Church,” he said.

Janie realized the importance of investing in the youth of our community. She establishing Phone Friends and Reading Partners. She also worked in her son’s classrooms. She was honored when the District offered her the job as an elementary fine arts/music teacher a position she held for eight years. Currently she is director of Healthy Start for Lindsay Unified. Janie was honored by the AAUW as Volunteer of the Year in 1999, and as a  Department of Education Employee of the year in 2001.

Lindsay has given them everything they could have ever dreamed or hoped for, and they have given back.

Contact The Recorder at 784-5000, Ext. 1040.