#229 Ralph Elmer Powers ( Arthur Erastus PowersHenry Edward "Edward" PowerGeorge Power )

Ralph was born 26 Jun 1920 in Derry Twp., Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania. He died 19 Dec 1990 in Miramar, Broward Co., Florida. He was cremated.

As soon as Ralph reached the age of 18, he joined the service and had already completed Air Force aircraft maintenance school when World War II broke out.

At the beginning of 1942 he was on a troop ship headed for the South Pacific Theater and spent the next year and a half on New Guinea with occasional R & R in Australia.

When he finally returned stateside, he had the "shakes", and a peculiar yellow color from malaria and the Atabrine he was taking to control it. After a visit home, he was sent to Miami and there got his next assignment, escorting service men's bodies home for burial. He detested this job.

When the war was over, Ralph elected to stay in the service and make that his career. He liked the structured life, made a lot of friends and enjoyed the travel. He was among the first of the men sent to Berlin for the airlift and stayed until it was over. Sometime later, he found he had taken the place of one of his good friends, Steve "Max" Maksymyk from the New Guinea days. Max had been assigned to Germany but, at that time, his wife was expecting their first child and raised such a fuss that Ralph was sent in his place.

His next few years were spent learning about each new aircraft as it was built, then traveling to air bases around the world to teach maintenance of that craft. He went to Korea while that war was in progress, later to Viet Nam. He was based for a long time at Chanute Field in Illinois, then at Langley in Virginia.

Between jobs, he would either go home to Pennsylanvia to visit family, to Florida to see his sisters or to Texas to visit his friend, John R. Goodin, who had a ranch outside Amarillo. He liked helping with the work on the ranch. He helped them with money during times of drought, and bought a few head of cattle to run with his friend's herd. As an added bonus when he was in Texas, he could see his brother, Allison, who lived in Dallas and get to know his family.

Ralph was home on furlough about the time his sister, Mary Madeline, gave birth to Paul Donald and his brother, James, had Donald James. Ralph remarked that everyone was naming their kids after Donald, but not one was named after him.

Early in June of 1958, he was in Pennsylvania on furlough and, as he was leaving, he told the family he would be out of the country for the next two weeks, couldn't tell where he was going as it was classified, but he would bring the women some French perfume. No one heard from him from July through September. This wasn't cause for alarm, as Ralph was no letter writer, but in October his father was quite ill, dying on 16 October, and still no one could contact him. Even the Red Cross, who thought he was in India, were unable to do so. Very shortly after the funeral, his sister, Florence, received a letter from the War Department saying that Ralph was being held hostage in Iraq. The War Department said they were doing everything they could to get him out of that country. He wasn't released until the end of December of 1958 and the family next saw him in the early part of 1959. Someone asked him if it was like "house arrest?" and he said, "Yes, at the point of a gun." Apparently it was quite frightening, as he stated, "You never knew when they were going to pull the trigger." He had gone to Iraq to deliver aircraft parts for the U.S. and got caught up in a military coup. He was held outside Baghdad at an air base called Habbaniya, and was almost the last to be set free, with only a British officer left.

Ralph finished 22 years in the Air Force and retired to Amarillo, he applied for a job at Pantex and, while he waited for his application and security clearance to be processed, he worked at a bowling alley; he was an avid bowler and had many trophies. Pantex is just outside Amarillo and is this country's largest repository for nuclear weapons and warheads. He worked there for 16 years. At his retirement party, his coworkers had a cake made up with miniature planes and the notation that he had served in three wars plus the Berlin Airlift.

Ralph was married at this time to a widow named Mary Morris, but they were not very compatible and divorced soon after he was diagnosed with cancer. He battled his illness for ten years trying to make light of his condition, but it got progressively worse. His niece, Charlotte, flew to Amarillo to take care of him, but she had her ailing mother back in Florida and, with the approval of his doctors, Ralph agreed to go to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He died there on 19 Dec 1990 and, per his request, he was cremated and his ashes scattered.

Ralph (relationship status suppressed while one person possibly living) #230 Mary E. Morris.

(Information suppressed while possibly living)


1930 U.S. Census, Derry Twp., Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania, Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002., Roll: 2155; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 16; Image: 356.0; FHL microfilm: 2341889.

1940 U.S. Census, Wythe, Elizabeth City Co., Virginia, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, Utah, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012., Roll: T627_4259; Page: 17A; Enumeration District: 28-18.

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

Charlotte Hensel, email to Tad Deffler, dated: 29 Dec 2006.

Florida Death Index 1877-1998, Ancestry.com. Florida Death Index, 1877-1998 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

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

Ralph Elmer Powers birth certificate, no. 21052, file 100351-20, registered no. 203 (20 Jun 1952), Dept. of Health, Pennsylvania.

Ralph Elmer Powers death certificate, (28 Dec 1990), State of Florida.

Texas Divorce Index 1968-2011, Ancestry.com [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005, Name: Ralph E. Powers.

Texas Marriage Collection 1814-1909 and 1966-2011, Ancestry.com [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005, Name: Ralph E. Powers.


Line Generation: 4

Relationship: Grand-Uncle