Olive Tomlinson died peacefully at her home in the Oak Bluffs Highlands on May 9, 2025. She was 87.
Olive was born in the Bronx, New York City, on Jan. 22, 1938, to William and Olive (“Cutie”) Bowles.
She was an engaging and humorous person who seemed to hear straight lines wherever she went. This resulted in jokes and laughter, which were at times outrageous by Vineyard standards. Her friends were from every geographic, ethnic, and religious segment of the Vineyard. This mixture was evidenced at her annual New Year’s Day party, where she honored her guests, with lots of laughter, for their good deeds and accomplishments during the previous year.
With her parents, Olive began spending summers in Oak Bluffs in the 1940s, and permanently moved to Martha’s Vineyard after retirement, as they had done before her. In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death on the Island by her husband of 34 years, Forrest Tomlinson. The beautiful nature, rich culture, and welcoming community for people of all races and backgrounds were among what drew the family to the Vineyard.
Olive and her parents were members of the extended Shearer family of Oak Bluffs, and were principals of the Shearer Summer Theater from the 1940s to the 1970s. With the help of Linsey Lee, oral historian of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, Olive helped to document the theater’s history. She donated her father’s photographs of the productions to the National Museum of African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian.
Olive was raised in a multiethnic area of the Bronx. Her childhood and school friends were from diverse backgrounds. This was the time of the first wave of Puerto Ricans coming to New York. She never forgot the Jewish refugees, with blue numerical tattoos on their arms, moving into the neighborhood after WWII.
She was the first member of her family to attend college, and earned two master’s degrees. She described the course of study for the second (a requirement for work certification, when she was already a skilled and accomplished educator), as walking in a downpour to buy the Sunday paper and finding the store had sold out. Nonetheless, she enjoyed her decades of work as a teacher/reading specialist and teacher trainer in New York City public schools, and teaching in private and Catholic schools around the city. Toward the end of her professional career, Olive worked as coordinator for Impact II, a national teacher networking program.
Olive and Forrest married at the Congregational Church of Morrisania in the Bronx. Immediately after their marriage began, the two of them and her father went on the 1965 March on Washington, the largest peace protest up to that point in American history. Throughout her life she took part in civil rights and antiwar marches.
The Tomlinsons first lived in Greenwich Village, and eventually settled in a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where they raised their two sons and two sister cats. Olive was one of the founders of the first cooperative preschools in Park Slope, and president of the PTA of the Brooklyn Ethical Culture School.
Olive loved travel. Before marrying, she spent time in Europe and Mexico, and after retirement she traveled to Latin America and Africa. Her favorite trips were to Spanish-speaking countries, where she enjoyed meeting and talking to local people.
Living year-round in Oak Bluffs, Olive deeply valued her friendship with fellow tennis players, artists, and her clients for Meals on Wheels, whom she served for many years. She also volunteered at Sheriff’s Meadow. At the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury, she was known for selling donated jewelry at their fundraisers.
Olive is survived by her sons, John Tomlinson and Peter Tomlinson; her daughter-in-law, Qinghua Li; and her grandson, Forrest Li Tomlinson. She also leaves her sister-in-law, Carol Tomlinson Spencer; nephew Alex Spencer; and niece, Lorna Spencer.
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