George Edberg-Olsen, 84; helped build Temple U. hall

"My parents were immigrants, and my father worked in a factory. That's why I appreciate Temple's populist mission so much," George Edberg-Olson said in 2000.

"I'm not a wealthy man, but clearly Temple University enabled me to progress in my life."

The occasion was the 2000 opening of Edberg-Olson Hall, Temple's football training headquarters at 11th and Diamond Streets, for which he contributed $1 million of the estimated $7 million construction cost.

On Monday, Dr. Edberg-Olson, 84, a former professor of Spanish at Temple, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease at the Artman Lutheran Home in Ambler, where he had resided for the last five years.

The building that bears his name is next to the football team's practice field and consists of coaches' offices, team meeting rooms, a weight room, and a locker room - the last of which replaced what an Inquirer story at the time called "a cramped, dank locker room at McGonigle Hall."

In 2007, the university gave him its F. Eugene Dixon Jr. Inspiration Award.

Born in the Wissinoming neighborhood of Philadelphia, Dr. Edberg-Olson graduated from Frankford High School in 1942 and served Stateside in the Navy, according to his niece, Charlotte Silversteen.

"He was Edberg the whole time until 1977," Silversteen said, "when to honor my grandmother, in the Spanish tradition, he went with Edberg-Olson," but without legally changing his name.

He earned his bachelor's degree in education from Temple in 1949, worked briefly for a drug firm, and earned a licentiate degree from the University of Havana in 1952.

Dr. Edberg-Olson earned a doctorate in Spanish literature from the University of Kansas in 1957 and returned to Temple to begin teaching Spanish in 1965.

In the interim, his niece said, he taught Romance languages at the University of Virginia in the 1958-59 academic year, Purdue University in 1960-61, the University of Pittsburgh in 1962-63, and Dickinson College from 1963 to 1965.

A resident of the Spring Garden section of Philadelphia, Dr. Edberg-Olson was chairman of the Temple department of Hispanic and Iberoamerican languages and literatures before retiring in the 1990s.

A member of the athletic committee that gave faculty members an oversight of sports, he had a special interest in crew.

"In preparing for a visit to the Henley Royal Regatta," in England, a program for the Dixon award stated, "he presented the rowing team with a brand new shell, which the team promptly named the 'George Edberg-Olson.' "

Besides his niece, Dr. Edberg-Olson is survived by a sister, Charlotte Fields.

Visitation was set for 1 p.m. tomorrow at Kirk & Nice Suburban Chapel, at Sunset Memorial Park on County Line Road, east of Pine Road, in Feasterville. A 2 p.m. funeral will follow, with burial there.