Image of Olive and Peter Fleming at the mission station in Puyupungu, c. 1955. Frame from <i>Mid-Century Martyrs</i> filmstrip developed by HCJB, Mission Aviation Fellowship, and the five widows in 1956.

Olive Ainslie Fleming Liefeld, 1932-

Olive Ainslie was born in 1932 in Seattle, Washington to Alex and Olive Ainslie. In the fall of 1950, she began dating fellow University of Washington student Peter Fleming. The two had known each other since childhood and attended the same church in Seattle. However, in the fall of 1951, Pete broke off their relationship because he felt called to remain single for his future missionary work in Ecuador. After Pete left for Ecuador in 1952, Olive began working for the Navy Department as a secretary. The two continued to correspond, and in March 1953 Peter proposed to Olive via letter. They married in the United States in June 1954, before relocating to Quito for a year of language study. Leaving Quito for the remote Ecuadorian Amazon in 1956, the couple ministered to the Quichua people while serving at mission stations in Shandia and Puyupungu.

Two months after Peter Fleming’s death, Olive returned to her family in Seattle only to be faced with the unrelenting media attention and requests for interviews and public appearances. Over the next several months, Olive accepted many speaking engagements, narrating the weeks leading up to the “Auca Incident” and the tragic events on Palm Beach. In November 1956, she accompanied Marilou McCully and her three children back to Ecuador and spent the next month concluding her affairs there before permanently returning to the United States. In the following years, she worked as a counselor and a secretary. Olive married Walter Liefeld in June 1959, and the couple had three children, David, Beverly, and Holly. The Liefelds moved to Deerfield, Illinois in 1964, where Walter taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Olive ministered to women students and wives of students. In 1989, the Liefeld family visited Ecuador for the first time since December 1956. A year later, Olive published her own account of the “Auca Incident,” Unfolding Destinies: The Untold Story of Peter Fleming and the Auca Mission. In 2004, Olive visited Ecuador once again to spend time with the Waorani Christian community.

Two pages from Olive Fleming's notebook of Christian hymns in Quichua copied and developed by her and her husband Peter Fleming during language studies in Quito, Shandia, and Puyupungu, c. 1954-1955.
Handwritten Quichua Hymns
In February of 1956, the President of Ecuador, José María Velasco Ibarra, honored the widows of the five missionaries at a ceremony in Quito, attended by Olive Fleming, Marjorie Saint, Barbara Youderian and Abraham Van der Puy.
Marjorie Saint, Barbara Youderian, and Olive Fleming at ceremony
Article in the <i>Seattle-Post Intelligencer</i>, March 3, 1956 reporting on Olive Fleming's return to Seattle two months after the death of her husband. Accompanying the article is a photograph of Olive holding two Waorani spears.
Missionary's Widow Back from Ecuador
Image of Olive and Peter Fleming at the mission station in Puyupungu, c. 1955. Frame from <i>Mid-Century Martyrs</i> filmstrip developed by HCJB, Mission Aviation Fellowship, and the five widows in 1956.
Olive and Peter Fleming at Puyupungu
Article titled "Ex-Missionary Wife Builds New Life" by Lois Tenke from unidentified publication (likely the <i>Glen Cove Record Pilot</i>). Tenke reports on Olive Fleming Liefeld's life in the United States seven years after the death of Peter Fleming, including her marriage to Walter Liefeld, ministry with the Brethren Gospel Chapel in Sea Cliff, Long Island, and birth of her two children. Clipping includes of photograph of Olive with son David and daughter Beverly.
Ex-Missionary Wife Builds New Life