Sterling, VA - Colquitt country native Shirley Olander died on February 27 in Reston, Virginia following a short illness. She was 88.

Shirley Jean Philyaw was born on her family's farm in rural Colquitt County, Georgia, the second of eight children. After attending Berry College in Rome, Georgia, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and obtained a Masters Degree in Nutrition from Vanderbilt University. While in Nashville she met a young US Air Force mechanic from Chicago and the two were married at Nippersink Lodge in Mentone, Alabama in 1965. After moving to Washington, DC, where Ms. Olander worked as a hospital nutritionist, the couple moved to California in 1967. After working as a nutritionist in Oakland and welcoming a son in 1970, Ms. Olander joined the first wave of Californians who moved to Idaho, arriving in the mountain town of Ketchum on Halloween, 1973 in a beat-up Ford Mustang towing an equally traumatized U-Haul trailer.

Ms. Olander, her husband, and two friends from the Bay Area founded The Kitchen restaurant on Main Street in Ketchum and Ms. Olander used her experience cooking for seven siblings and her education as a nutritionist to feed generations of skiers and hikers. The Kitchen was famous for its funky décor while serving dishes borrowed from their favorite San Francisco restaurants. In a rare home loss, as the lone southerner Ms. Olander was unable to convince the group to add grits to the menu.

After managing The Kitchen's sister restaurant, the Food Tree, in Hailey, Idaho Ms. Olander transitioned to real estate in 1984 and returned to California - which she unironically referred to as the "promised land" - in 1990. Ms. Olander landed in the Bay Area, living in Dillon Beach and Petaluma before settling in Sonoma. There Ms. Olander drank wine, traveled extensively through the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and entertained friends and family in her home surrounded by wisteria, rosemary, and the pit-pit sounds of quail at dusk. In Sonoma Ms. Olander worked as an eldercare specialist until she retired in 2015.

Ms. Olander is predeceased by her parents, William Rufus and Maggie Equilla, her seven siblings, and her ex-husband, Keith Olander. She is survived by her loving son Michael, daughter-in-law Beth, and two grandchildren Ellis and Axel, all of Washington, DC.