It took the help of a U.S. senator, but the family of Maj. Andrew Olmsted on Friday finally prevailed in a weeks-long battle to retrieve e-mails their son had written before his death last year in Iraq.
Olmsted’s father, Wes, had been frustrated by AT&T since January and worried that the last written links to his son, who had been based at Fort Carson, were lost forever.
“It was very upsetting because I knew what we have lost,” Wes Olmsted said. “All of that back and forth — a lot of it very personal — and then it was just gone.”
But Friday, AT&T officials finally provided good news for the Olmsted family. The hundreds of e-mails are in the archive maintained by the telecommunications giant and would be accessible to the family soon.
“We’re taking care of him,” AT&T spokesman John Britton said.
Maj. Olmsted was felled by small-arms fire in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2008. He was 38. His death drew worldwide attention after a friend followed his instructions and posted a posthumous blog item penned by the soldier. He also had a wide following as a blogger for the Rocky Mountain News, as he reported what he was seeing while stationed in Iraq.
One of the last e-mails Wes Olm sted received at his Wisconsin home was about how low his son was feeling. It was shortly after Christmas, and e-mails went back and forth with Andrew feeling down about the situation there and his mother and father trying to assuage his melancholy.
“I told him how much we thought of him and how much others thought of him as well,” Olmsted said. “We were trying to buck him up. He’d been there about six months, and it was clear he was feeling down.”
The fight for the e-mails had been brewing since January, when Wes Olmsted decided to cancel one of two lines AT&T had provided for the family. Olmsted said AT&T mistakenly canceled the wrong line — the one with the archive of e-mails.
When he tried to correct the error, he said he had to chew through a line of AT&T technical providers who seemed unable to get him the e-mails. At one point, he said a technician was able to get two photos, but that was it.
As the weeks dragged on, Olmsted grew frustrated. He even wrote a letter to AT&T chairman and chief executive Randall Stephenson. He never heard back.
“It seemed like a mini-tragedy on top of everything,” Wes Olmsted said. “A lot of the e-mails were simple — just what he was doing that day, but some of them were details just for us that he didn’t put in the blog for the Rocky Mountain News.”
Growing more desperate to get the e-mails, he also contacted U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., to see whether there was anything his office could do.
Kohl’s office confirmed it was working on the case, but spokeswoman Dawn Schueller said they couldn’t discuss details because of privacy issues.
AT&T spokesman Britton said he didn’t know why the process dragged on so long and that company records showed the last time Olmsted contacted them was Jan. 17.
But Olmsted said he talked to AT&T field-support people well after that date.
Regardless, Maj. Olmsted’s mother, Nancy, said the family was gratified to hear the e-mails were intact and, just to be safe, they would likely print hard copies of them.
“That’s terrific news,” Nancy Olm sted said Friday. “I don’t think we’re that thrilled with AT&T, but I guess they did come through in the long run.”
