High Potential’s Kaitlin Olson mourns devastating family loss: ‘My forever favorite person’

It’s a difficult time for Kaitlin Olson’s family, with the actress taking to Instagram to share some truly devastating family news.

The High Potential star, 50, broke the news on Instagram that her father Donald Lee Olson had passed away, paying tribute to him with several family photos, throwbacks, a snap with her husband Rob McElhenney, and one touching photo of the pair holding hands before his passing.

“Honestly it feels a little gross to bring this to social media,” she penned alongside the photos. “It’s too fragile and too private. But nothing feels more wrong than to just move on with life as if the worst thing in the world didn’t happen. As if everything that matters didn’t just suddenly end.”

“My dad died,” Kaitlin continued. “My first love, my first protector and my forever favorite person. He fought so hard and so long to stay with us. I hate words right now. None are good enough to describe who he was.”

Sharing some more insight into their close bond and their final moments together, she added: “The luckiest thing to happen to me in this lifetime was getting him as my dad. Maybe the second was the gift of holding him on his way out. I love you, daddy. I will keep all my promises. Just like you.”

Fans inundated the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star with condolences and messages of support. In the comments section, Rob, 49, also paid tribute to his father-in-law. He and Kaitlin have been married since 2008 and share two sons, Axel and Leo. 

“Words are impossible. There is no one like him,” he wrote. “My whole goal in life is to be half the man he was. I’ve never seen a person love someone the way he loved you. I am so grateful that he lived and so proud that I got to be his son for the past 17 years.”

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Kaitlin was born in 1975 to Donald and Melinda Leora in Portland, Oregon, briefly living in Washington before moving back to Portland. From 2000 to 2001, her father was a publisher for the Portland Tribute.

When she began breaking into the mainstream with It’s Always Sunny, her father shared with the paper: “She certainly has passion,” adding: “At college, I suggested – a couple of times – that she pursue a second career. Something to fall back on. But she remained singularly focused on her passion.”

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Her move to Los Angeles to pursue acting full-time drew some ire from her dad at first. “Look, 180,000 people go there every year to make something happen. Well, she went… and she made it happen.” She soon got inducted into the prestigious circle of The Groundlings, which allowed her to get her start in Hollywood.

Kaitlin herself told hobotrashcan.com of how she avoided getting disillusioned by the industry: “This is like the lamest, cheesiest answer, but I really just decided from the beginning, after listening to everyone tell me how hard it was – ‘it’s so hard, you just have to have a good support system because it’s so hard’ – I just decided that I wasn’t going to be miserable.”

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She credited family and friends for getting her there. “It’s beautiful here. I lived in Santa Monica, I had great friends, I got right into The Groundlings, which was really, really fun and I just decided not to be miserable like everyone else was.”