Olaf Fink

Olaf James Fink (March 15, 1914 – March 26, 1973) was an educator and politician from New Orleans, Louisiana, who served as a Democrat in the Louisiana State Senate from 1956 to 1972.^[1]

Biography

Born in Algiers, the 15th Ward of New Orleans, Fink was the eldest of six children of Charles Peter Fink and the former Mary Caroline Lind. He resided at the age of twenty-six with his parents at 245 Vallette Street in New Orleans. He was listed in the 1940 U.S. Census as a "commercial teacher" who had at the time left college after three years.^[2]

Fink was educated at John McDonogh Public School No. 4 and the S. J. Peters Boys High School of Commerce in New Orleans. He then attended the private Roman Catholic Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. He obtained a master's degree from Loyola University in New Orleans. He taught at Nicholls and Peters high schools, but the majority of his career was at Behrman High School, named for Martin Behrman, the longest-serving mayor of New Orleans. Prior to his retirement in May 1972, both in teaching for thirty-three years and in the state Senate for sixteen years, Fink was a member of the faculty at Karr Junior High School. He also was for a time the secretary of the influential Orleans Levee Board. He sponsored the Olaf Fink Golf Tournament for Teenagers at Brechtel Park in Algiers. He was heavily committed to improving the lot of the mentally retarded.^[3] An officer of the United States Navy Reserve,^[4] he was a member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was also affiliated with Lions International, and the Choctaw Carnival Club, a participant in Mardi Gras.^[3][5]

Fink died in New Orleans at the age of fifty-eight in the early spring of 1973, less than a year after his retirement. He is interred at Westlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Gretna in suburban Jefferson Parish.^[6] He was married to the former Doris Jean Smith (1919-2008), who in 1959 was listed as an office secretary in New Orleans. She died in Montpelier in Williams County in northwestern Ohio. The couple had no children.^[7]

In May 1974, the Orleans Parish School Board renamed the special education center at 1300 Richland Road on the West Bank of New Orleans the Olaf Fink Center for Pre-Vocational Education.^[3] Along with other properties, the board sold the Fink Center in 2011.^[8]

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