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Flowers, Friend, Before You Die

Flowers, Friend, Before You Die

This marker commemorates for all time
the gracious generosity of
Ira Frost Powers
to the people of Portland
"And so thy thought, when thou art gone,
shall yet live on. - A friend of grateful man"

The Birthday Club
George L Baker    W.J. Hofmann    Ernest A. Sommer
Charlse P. Berg    Ernest L. King Donald J. Sterling
Chris D. Bruun    Dan J. Malarkey    Nathan Strauss
John H. Burgard    Julius L. Meier    Guy W. Talbot
C. C. Colt    Phil Metschan    Wm. L. Thompson
Virgil A. Crum    Otto W. Mielke    Wm. F. Turner
Charlse E. Dant    Roscoe C. Nelson    Harry B. Van Duzer
Kenneth D. Dawson    Emery Olmstead    Dean Vincent
Franklin T. Griffith    Ore L. Price    Raymond B. Wilcox
Russell Hawkins    Frank H. Ransom    Ralph E. Williams

September Nineteen Thirty


This plaque is placed on a large rock, in an obscure partially hidden stretch of roadside on Highway 43 in Portland Oregon. Just south of the Sellwood Bridge, along the Willamette River, is Powers Marine Park. The park is between highway 43 and the river, and somewhere in the middle of that park is this rock and plaque.
Ira Powers, according to the city of Portland's park page, was the owner of Powers Furniture around the time of the great depression, and he donated a large chunk of the land in that area to the city. The area of Tryon Creek state park, Terwilliger Blvd, and Lewis & Clark College. It is unclear whether the actual land of Powers Marine Park was part of the donation.

I do not know what "The Birthday Club" is.

Now Ira has this post on my well visited blog remembering him, along with a fairly modest plaque mostly hidden on a nondescript rock in an unmaintained or improved part of a fairly unused city park. Fame.
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Comments

Isaac Laquedem said…
Ira Powers was an interesting man and a philanthropist later in his life. (I once met his daughter and used to live next to a woman whom I believe was his stepdaughter or some other not clearly described collateral relation.) He was instrumental in getting Terwilliger Boulevard extended to run to Lake Oswego,and in fact on road maps of the 1960s and 1970s the part of Terwilliger that runs from Boones Ferry Road to Lake Oswego is labeled "Terwilliger Boulevard Extension." I don't know the origin of the Birthday Club but I recognize many of the names as movers and shakers of the community in 1930.
10:13 AM
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