One of Macon’s biggest philanthropists has been blessing people for decades

This year, the Telegraph chose two representations for our Person of the Year feature: the Macon-Bibb library staff and Beverly Olson. We feel each made a significant impact on the community this year, and paved the way for progress in the next. Macon, and Middle Georgia at large, is made better by their efforts.

In a newspaper article from 50 years ago, a 17-year-old south Florida girl named Beverly Knight is pictured with a microscope. The newspaper item from that day in May 1968 goes on to describe the teenager’s aim to become a marine biologist.

The breezy write-up, part of a running local feature in the Miami Herald that spotlighted “Today’s Top Teen,” mentioned Knight’s brown hair and brown eyes and told how she was president of her senior class at Everglades School for Girls. It told how she played tennis, softball and volleyball, and how she worked with the Humane Society and a Miami hospital and how her favorite subjects were government and biology.

The article added: “She studies two and a half hours a day.”

But less than 13 months later, in mid-June 1969 after her freshman year at Briarcliff College in New York, Knight was critically injured in a fall at Yellowstone National Park.

According to published reports at the time, she and her boyfriend, a student in Montana, had gone for a vacation drive along Wyoming’s Lewis River Canyon. They stopped for an impromptu hike, lost their footing and fell. Knight tumbled down a steep canyon wall into a stream.

“I should have died,” she said in a recent interview about her philanthropy in Macon, where she has lived since 1978, “and yet I was saved.”

After recovering from the accident, she never had a career as a marine biologist. Even so, she has more than made a name for herself in Middle Georgia.

On the heels of her $1 million personal donation, which led to her becoming the namesake for the new Children’s Hospital here — the Beverly Knight Olson Children’s Hospital, Navicent Health — her name will become a fixture in lights locally for generations to come. Not that she isn’t already well-known.

Knight Olson, whose father, James L. Knight was founder of the newspaper chain that owned The Telegraph, came to Macon from North Carolina in the late ’70s when her husband, Edmund E. Olson, took a job at the Macon paper as a general manager. He became publisher in 1983.

“I do as much as I can,” Knight Olson, 68, said. “I think God has given me a second chance to live. … My father always felt that if you live in a city, you should do business in that city and you should give back to that city.”

When Knight Olson was a member of Macon’s City Council earlier this decade, she gave her salary to a youth group. She serves on boards that include entities at Mercer University, the Rescue Mission of Central Georgia and the Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful Foundation.

“I’m everywhere,” she said.

She isn’t exaggerating.

The week before Christmas, she was at a luncheon for senior citizens that she sponsored at a recreation center in Unionville.

Melvin Flowers, a youth basketball coach who organized the gathering, described Knight Olson as “an angel of God.”

“That’s what I call her all the time,” Flowers said. “She just blesses people. Her heart goes out to everybody. She wants you to be happy. She doesn’t want to see anybody sad. She just gives her heart to everybody.”

Knight Olson has, in a way, taken the city she has called home for the past 40 years under her wing. She has in the past owned an arena football team, the Macon Knights, and operated the former Starcadia entertainment complex off Bass Road.

“I love Macon. I love to see it progress. I want it to be the best it can be,” she said. “I just feel a part of it.”

Mercer University President Bill Underwood said Knight Olson is “tenderhearted, generous and an energetic supporter of our community.”

As for the Children’s Hospital and all she has done to further its cause, she said, “It’s overwhelming to see my name on it. I saw it when the name went up. It’s very gratifying. … The new hospital is going to be fabulous.”

Last year when the announcement was made that the hospital would be named for Knight Olson, Ellen Terrell, chief development officer of the Navicent Health Foundation, described Knight Olson as someone who “epitomizes selflessness and compassion.”

“We could not think of a more fitting person,” Terrell said.

Navicent Health President and CEO Ninfa Saunders at the time spoke of Knight Olson’s “years of hands-on care for our children and their families.”

Knight Olson said recently that she hopes to be remembered by future generations as a supporter of her hometown.

“I hope they know I was a philanthropist and lover of Macon, a promoter of Macon everywhere I go,” she said. “I can’t wait to tell people about Macon. I hope I’m a good ambassador.”

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report.