Patricia Ann Powers, aged 95 of Wapella, IL, left this world on Friday, October 17, 2025. Visitation will be held from 4-6 pm at Calvert Funeral Chapels in Clinton on October 31, 2025. Private rosary prayer service will be conducted at 3:15pm prior to the visitation by Fr. Patrick Henehan, former pastor of St. Patrick’s, Wapella. Funeral High Mass will be celebrated by Fr. Thomas Szydlik at St. Patrick’s, Wapella at 10 am on November 1, 2025, All Saints Day. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in Pat’s memory to the Wapella Fire Department or The Warner Hospital in Clinton. All of Don and Pat’s children were born at the Dr. John Warner Hospital, as it was called in the day.
Pat, daughter of Dennis John Burns and Mary Krueger, was born January 23, 1930, in the middle of a snowstorm in Barnett Township, DeWitt County. The doctor arrived through the snow drifts by horse and sleigh late: Pat had already made her appearance. Her birth certificate read “Grace Ann Burns”, but her mother did not like the name Grace and crossed through it, writing “Patricia.” Mom discovered this information when she was applying for a passport to go to Ireland in 1992 that her birth certificate had not been legally changed,
Pat married Donald James Powers on June 16, 1951, and raised seven children: Mary Pat (Mike) Killian, Dennis (Sandy) Powers, Francis (Danna) Powers, Tom (Lori) Powers, Julia Powers, Margaret (Chris) Hanacek, and Richard (Laurie) Powers. She has 12 grandchildren: David Killian, Colleen (Ryan) Mariotti, Kelli Killian, Don Powers, Jack (Jaclynn) Amanda (Nick) Kucinski, Alicia (Zak) Vinson, Alivia (Mason) Ohm, Patrick Simonton, Charlie and Lucy Hanacek, Donovan Powers and 15 great-grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
Pat Powers did not have an easy life, even though she would never, ever say those words, or reflect on hard times past. She was not a person who dwelled on hurts or regrets, always forward thinking, which meant for a farmer’s wife: Get the next meal on the table!
When first married, she worked on perfecting her pie crusts, and she struggled. She told us that the chickens ate more pastry than her farm family. She had many pressures as a young person: at age 21 a bride, at age 22 a mother.
Before that she was a member of the Burns farm family, and they knew many hardships. It was a large family of 12 children, and everyone worked. They were Mary Medler, Lawrence and James Burns, Ellen Dolanc, Bobby, Donald, Bud, Bill, and Dolores Burns, Betty Maxwell, and Helen Haas. Helen Haas survives. Two of the young boys, Bobby and Donald, died of diphtheria on the same day, something that is hard to imagine in our era of vaccines.
Pat loved the animals and had a particular affinity for the feathered creatures, be they goose, duck, chickens, or turkeys. She also took on a “runt” pig that was expected to die and nursed it to a full-blown market hog. Grandpa Burns took that hog to market and sold it. Mom did not get the money for that hog, but Grandpa Burns bought her a gold watch for her Clinton High School graduation in 1947 that she still has.
At 17, after graduating from Clinton High School, she left her home in Barnett Township to take a job at State Farm Insurance in Bloomington. Patricia followed in her older sister Ellen’s footsteps in that way, staying with a Bloomington family, the Whites, and trading her labors for room and board while she worked at State Farm.
During that time, Mr. White allowed her to borrow their car to take driving lessons. She got her license and a measure of independence.
She met Donald Powers at a baseball game in Wapella around that same time, and Pat, being conscious of the pecking order in the family asked Don if perhaps he should be asking her older sister out.
“No”, was the answer.
They married on June 16, 1951, and raised seven children.
Life went on in Wapella on the farm. We kids learned how to “dress” chickens, which is a nice word for saying that Mom cut off their heads, and the chickens did the death dance in the chicken yard. One of them danced into the adjacent cornfield, and our father chastised our mother for letting that happen. He searched also but could not find that stilled carcass.
All of us children were always busy on the farm whether it be meal preparation, grocery shopping at Troxel’s/Abraham’s/Buck’s, gardening, laundry, cleaning, helping in the fields, or taking care of the younger children. We had no time for shenanigans. We cut thistles out of the pasture, took care of the chickens, mucked stalls in the barn. Still, we DID find time for shenanigans. Our mom way always busy. We had beautiful plentiful meals, nice clean clothes, homemade birthday cakes, and great Christmases. Pat was never still for a moment, whether it was polishing the baby’s white shoes or crocheting in the evenings.
When the tornado struck on May 15, 1968, the entire family was fortunate to all be on the first floor and at home at 5:17pm. We made it to the basement just in time. If anyone had been upstairs in the bedrooms, they would have been killed by the shards of glass that were driven into the drywall. The bedding, including the mattress pads and pillows, were stripped clean from the beds and sucked out the windows, never to be found again.
Hovering in the basement under an old kitchen table, we remember the crashing above us and the roar of the wind. Mom cried out: “There goes our house!” Dad said, “We will build another one.” Mom stopped crying.
In the spring of 1970, we moved from the damaged OLD house that our great grandparents had built, into the NEW house – five bedrooms and two bathrooms. The two bathrooms were the secret to life with nine people. Mom and Dad both worked really hard to make the house nice: Dad and his brother Leo helped the carpenters, and Mom working after supper staining and sanding all the woodwork by hand including refinishing the newel post, banister, and balustrades from the old house. It was a labor of love, hard work, and she pushed herself hard to finish the goal.
As the children left home to take their place in the world, Pat increased her enjoyment of life with her Card Club and her church: St. Patrick’s of Wapella. Patricia was an active participant, which meant that we spent many a Saturday dusting the pews, vacuuming every inch, including the choir loft. The Turkey Supper was sacrosanct and was always a magnificent feast and social event at St. Pat’s in a long tradition, going from Greene’s Hall above the old Bank in Wapella to the new parish center behind St. Pat’s.
Don Powers loved when Card Club was coming to our house. Pat would experiment for weeks with new adventurous culinary delights, and Don was the happy recipient of that endeavor, plus leftovers.
When Don Powers was diagnosed with an arrythmia and later with cancer, Pat took care of him in the long tradition she had in taking care of all creatures: her animals, her children, her parents. Don was in the best of hands but slipped away at the age of 66. Mom was a widow at barely 60.
Pat started a new chapter in her life. She was always independent. She always took pride in appearances. She started home improvement by having the house re-sided, adding shutters, a new roof, new windows, new landscaping. We remember Ernest Thorp saying that it looked like a brand-new house. Besides counting the weekly church donations, a job that she inherited from her deceased husband, she was a stalwart member of the Altar and Rosary Society of St. Patrick’s. She helped the priests in every way she could. She bought a beautiful blue Cadillac that she kept polished to a high sheen.
She was proud to drive her Cadillac to Hinsdale, IL, by herself to visit Margaret and Chris. When Mags and Chris moved to the Seattle area, Mom and Chris’s mother Delores flew together to Seattle to see Margaret’s family. She visited Julia and her family in Casey. She flew to Ireland with Julia and Mary Pat after Dad’s passing. When Pat got home from Ireland, she told other people that the food was terrible and that she was cold the entire time. However, we all ate the same food and stayed at the same places and did not have those experiences.
She made many a bus trip with her friend, Geri Harpeneau’s group to Branson and other destinations.
Pat enjoyed her grandchildren.
When it came time for the heartbreaking decision to live at Assisted Living at Hawthorne in Clinton in 2013, Mom did not cry about it. The kids did.
A thank you to all those folks at Hawthorne, especially Shelly Espy, who helped Pat the first six years, even when it was not easy. There were lots of laughs and lots of trials. Helen and Ernest Thorp, Anita Gibson, Don Reum, Tom Owens, and Donald North all became her new family. Pat rolled with it.
In July, 2019, when she needed more care, the family chose Hickory Point Christian Village in Forsyth, and she was initially unhappy that she couldn’t stay in her beautiful room at Hawthorne in Clinton, but she adapted. After surviving COVID in November 2020, she went back to her home room #106. During the time of COVID Pat was isolated from family and made this move alone, with new caretakers to get to know, and new ways.
She looked back, but she moved on, always pleasant, with a joke to share with the staff. Pat was popular and well-liked. Even when she had to go from the wheelchair to the bed in the last week of her life, the staff would come in and say hello, and you could see the love and concern on their faces.
The Powers kids were very lucky to have Pat as their mother.
