Drawn Together

A tour of the home of Merle and Jean Ollom — a husband-and-wife artistic team who have been close friends for 50 years — gives an art gallery vibe more so than a regular household.

A collage of watercolors, oil paintings and sketches adorn the walls of nearly every room in the house, leading the visitor to believe the Olloms would need a curator more than a housekeeper.

Harmonious and content, they sipped hot coffee as they defended this visitor from an overly affectionate watchdog, nestled into nostalgia and reflected on five decorative decades.

Merle and Jean met 50 years ago at Incarnate Word, where he taught her commercial art.

“Well, it used to be commercial art,” Jean said. “These days it’s graphic art.”

Jean’s first husband was Henry Reese IV, who Merle had already known. After both of their spouses passed away, Jean and Merle hooked up— and the rest was history.

“Merle came to my son Noel’s high school graduation,” Jean said. “We corresponded over the years.”

Although the Olloms have only been married for 10 years, they have known each other for 50.

“That’s 100 years!” Merle said. “Double the fun.”

When asked what he finds most appealing about art, Merle offered a very blunt response.

“Money!” he said with a laugh. “When I was in high school I took a correspondence course from Minneapolis which didn’t work out so well. But that got me interested. So when I came down to Texas I knew there were a lot of missions here, and I thought it would be a good place to go.”

From there, Merle got a job with the San Antonio Light newspaper, where he worked for five years.

“I was 18 at the time, and covered the Texas City disaster,” he said. “I developed photos of the incident and sent them to Chicago, New York and L.A. It was a big deal.”

A five-year stint with the San Antonio Express-News followed, bolstering a confidence in the young Merle that would ultimately lead to his serving in World War II. How he got there, however, was something of an anomaly.

“I kept waiting to be drafted, but I never was,” he said. “After a couple of years I went down to the draft board and asked them what the holdup was. They said they had me in the dead file! So I should have stayed home that day.”

Merle said that because of his honesty and amicable personality the draft board allowed him to enlist in the area of his choice— which ended up being six years in the Army Reserves. Afterwards, he worked doing silkscreen artwork and sculpturing.  It was at that point that he developed the Texas Star Emblem.

“I did the original drawing for that,” he said. “But I couldn’t patent it because I was working for someone else.”

Merle eventually ended up teaching art at Incarnate Word, where he met Jean. Obviously, the two had no inkling they were to wed 40 years later. Between those bookends, Merle became an entrepreneur— launching the Ollom School of Design, Ollom Advertising Agency and Ollom Publishing Company. He also published nationally circulated book on how to letter.

“This was before the computer,” he said. “Everything that was in a magazine had to be hand-lettered.”

Merle went on to set up his own art studio, obtaining a $50,000 contract with Reed Candle Company, for whom he worked for three years. He then began doing illustrated tourist maps of cities like San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.

“We had to go to the cities and shoot all the buildings from the south side in order to visualize them for the map,” he said. “That contract ran for over $50,000.”

After their spouse’s passing, Merle and Jean decided to get together— as they’ve remained for 10 years.

“I’ve loved him since the first day I laid eyes on him,” Jean said. “When I met him in the 1960s he had curly brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses and thought, ‘he is cute!’”

Jean’s initial idea was to ask Merle out, but she decided against it when she learned his age.

“He told me he was 32!” she said. “I was only 18 so I thought he was old. Plus I found out he was married with three children. But he was such a great teacher, and we all loved him.”