Retired Major Oleta Lawanda Crain was the former regional administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau, Region VIII, from December 1984 through December 1999, responsible for women in Colorado, Montana, North and South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

Crain was born Sept. 8, 1913, in Earlsboro, Rural, Seminole County, Okla. to the late William Alexander Crain and Violet Paula Alexander Crain. Oleta was one of seven children with two brothers Albert and William and four sisters: Gladys, Grace, Halley and Pearl. All of whom preceded her in death.

Oleta grew up in Wewoka, Okla. where she attended elementary school and Douglass High School. She studied for three years at Langston University in Langston, Okla., and then transferred to Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo. where she was awarded her bachelor of arts degree in social science. In college, she was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

After graduation from college, for three years, Oleta taught gym and history, and was assistant to the high school band of Hugo, Okla. During her school career and the years following, she displayed considerable leadership ability.  While in college, she was a president of the YWCA, a member of the National Executive Council of the student YWCA, the first girl of color to become a co-chair of the Negro “Y” Conference at Waverland, Miss., a secretary of the dramatic and debating society, a cheerleader, and lettered in softball and volleyball. She also served as counselor of religion and dramatics at Camp Nizboni, owned and operated by The Phyllis Wheatley Branch YWCA.

She read religious books as a young woman, and enrolled at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. World War II and her desire to do her part cut her schooling short.  After basic training, she was one of three Black women among 300 women to enter officer’s training. She and the other two couldn’t be kept in the barracks with the white women, of course, so officials put them in nearby private rooms.

Oleta said, “I was so happy to be Black, and not have to put up with barrack’s life. We got up earlier in the morning than the others and hurried over to take our showers, segregation, you know; at least we weren’t bothered by crowded showers. I did not have a chip on my shoulder, and seldom made an issue of things like that. If you can’t do anything about something, you just as well make the best of it.”

Make the best of it she did.  She served in the U.S., Alaska, England and Germany.  Though shunned by the Army band in her first year of service, she studied ballet and opera and enjoyed concerts in London and Paris.

She ended up earning three bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree – and attended Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the School of Business, England’s Cambridge University, and the School of International Relations in Austria.  She also taught middle school and college.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1963 with the rank of major, Oleta joined the Labor Department in Washington as a contract expert the next year.  She transferred four years later to Boston, where she served as chief of the contracting unit, and earned her master’s of public administration from Northeastern University.  Subsequently, she became associate regional administrator.

Oleta transferred to Denver in 1984 to become regional administrator for the Women’s Bureau where she worked with six states: Colorado, Montana, North and South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, networking with women and women’s groups in a quest to improve their wages, working conditions and career opportunities. 

Oleta received numerous honors and awards.  Among those, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame and received the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Legacy Award from the National Council of Negro Women, Denver Section.  She received the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award from the King Colorado Holiday Commission, the 1987 Women at Work Award, and a Distinguished Career Service Award from the United States Department of Labor.

While Oleta was proud of her Army career, she could not be persuaded that she was a trailblazer.  In fact, she was thoroughly unimpressed at the notion that she was Colorado’s first African-American woman to enter the military.  Although, she mastered the coronet, saxophone and French horn, she was a washout when it came to blowing her own horn.

Oleta encouraged men to ease up on the “macho, breadwinner role,” and share those responsibilities with women, proclaiming “We’ll all live longer.”

Oleta had a sense of humor – in fact, when explaining how a reporter could find her in the large downtown building which housed her office, she said, “The building has two sets of elevators; mine is the one at the back.”

During a previous newspaper interview, Oleta explained:  “I don’t know why I retired so young (she was 85) – I guess I just got a little tired.”

Retired Major Oleta L. Crain’s funeral services were held on Thursday, Nov. 15, with military honors in the Garden of Honor at Fairmount Commentary.

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