#222 James Arthur "Jim" Powers ( Mary Catherine "Mayme" SeylerEllen Catherine AllisonGeorge AllisonArchibald AllisonArchibald Allison )

Jim was born 29 Sep 1912 in Salona, Clinton Co., Pennsylvania. He died 25 Apr 1987 in Pitcairn, Pennsylvania from heart attack. He was buried in Westmoreland County Memorial Park, Greensburg, Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania.

All his life, Jim retained strong ties to Salona, even trying (unsuccessfully) to buy the family home. By age 18, he was working in Baltimore, coming back on weekends. Once, when his brother, Allison, was home for one of his rare visits, Jim came to Derry bringing gallon buckets of fresh oysters. The entire clan gathered at the Owens Ave. home for a feast, all the sisters in the kitchen sharing the cooking and the men hanging out together.

After his marriage to Edna, they lived for a while with his sister, Anna, in Latrobe. Later they moved to their own home before the birth of their second daughter.

Jim began having health problems and all through the late 1930s and early 1940s he was in and out of Latrobe Hospital. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him, even going so far as to pull all his teeth thinking that there were infected his problems. This continued until February of 1941. Then, during one of his times in the hospital, he was walking the halls of the hospital when a patient was wheeled out onto a sun porch for lack of space in the rooms due to a flu epidemic. Someone came and told him that the patient was his sister, Dorothy, whom he hadn't recognized. He stayed with her until the nurses came in, then went into the bathroom. He was discovered later, unconscious with blood spattered around--an undetected stomach ulcer had perforated. He was rushed into surgery for repair, spent weeks in critical care before being released. He didn't know that, during this time, Dorothy had died; the staff monitored his visitors carefully to make sure no one told him.

At the time of his discharge, he weighed less than 100 pounds and needed lots of quiet, rest and a bland diet. He accepted his sister, Anna's, offer to stay with them in Blairsville. Anna's husband, Alfonse, helped carry him up and down stairs as needed, and the three teenage girls in the house helped take care of him. Edna and the girls went to stay with his sister, Eleanor, and her husband in Derry. However, Jim and Edna began having problems and eventually divorced.

He eventually recovered his health and went to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad. About this time he met and married Betty. Jim was injured at work when a beam fell on him. He received a compensation from the railroad and decided to buy a bar in New Kensington, Pennsylvania with his sister, Anna and her husband. The first few years went well, but neither man was suited to it and eventually they sold the bar. Jim and Betty moved back to Pitcairn and Jim went to work for the city as an electrician.

Betty's family lived there, so they had a lot of support when Betty developed cancer and died. Jim lived alone from then on, estranged from his son after Betty's death and with only occasional visits from his daughters. In April 1978, a friend became concerned after not hearing from him for several days, contacted the family, who entered the apartment and found him dead.

Jim (relationship status suppressed while one person possibly living) first #223 Edna Kunkle.

(Information suppressed while possibly living)

Children of this relationship:

#329FiMary Madeline Powers 
#331FiiLois Jean Powers 

Jim married second #224 Elizabeth C. "Betty" Myers.

Marriage notes

 

Betty died Bef 1 Sep 1989.

Children of this relationship:

#333MiDonald James Powers 

"Clintondale", The Express, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania (29 Sep 1936), p. 3, col. 4.

1920 U.S. Census, Scalp Level, Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania, Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Roll: T625_1662; Page: 5A; Enumeration District: 88; Image: 892

Charlotte Hensel, The Arthur Powers Family, (unpublished, 2007).

Personal recollection of Florence (Powers) Deffler, as related to Tad Deffler.


Line Generation: 6

Relationship: Grand-Uncle