Some of my early memories of Jimmy Powell.
Jim and I met in first grade (no public kindergarten back then) at Richardson Park School (RPS) and continued there for 9 years before going on to Conrad High, graduating together in 1965. Since learning this week of Jim’s passing I have reflected on those years and some of the events we shared, including 12 years in the same homeroom each school day.
As we were tasked early on to learn our numbers we somehow became involved in a competition to write down the numbers sequentially. This may have started as homework to write down 1 to 20 or 1 to 100. Anyway first is was a page, which quickly grew to several pages, then days and weeks later…. well anyway I gave up when I realized Jim had dedicated a notebook to the task and had progressed well into numbers which we had no idea how to verbally express. We had no idea what a million or billion was. He would come in each day with more pages he had filled overnight and at every opportunity.
Then there was the day the boiler in the basement under our classroom blew up/ caught fire. It was the first time fire trucks came to a fire drill!
Jim’s mother was from France and came to school to teach us some elementary French and some songs. This culminated in a dress performance with us singing the nursery rhyme “Frere Jacques” in both French and English. It’s about Friar John who is sleeping when he is supposed to be ringing the bells. All the French I know I learned in elementary school.
In third grade we started in Elementary Band with Mr. Clatch. We both kept with it, continuing on to Jr. High concert and marching bands. Lots of good experiences with that. Following RPS we continued with band at Conrad band camp, more concerts, parades, and even competition in Buffalo, New York in winter! Seeing a picture* of Jim with his tuba brings back many memories.
It was also around this time when we joined Cub Scout Pack 97. Trips to the Chrysler tank plant in Newark and to see a ship (SS United States maybe) in New York. This was followed by membership in Troop 97 Boy Scouts with camping at Rodney (Photo) and lots of adventures.
One very personal memory was on the first day I came back to school after my father died in 1956. Jim was waiting for me at the edge of the school yard when I got there. He wanted to share his condolences. Pretty heavy stuff for a third grader and something I have never forgotten.
Jim’s parents had purchased him a World Book encyclopedia so when we had to do school reports, it was a good excuse to go to Jim’s house to “study and work on the reports”. Enough said about that.
Closer to the Jr. High time frame in addition to Band and Scouts we belonged to the WMCA in Wilmington. On Saturday’s we would go there to swim, play pool (Jim usually won), and eat lunch. Jim’s dad would take us sometimes, but often we took the bus.
Jim’s house on Catalpa had a basketball net on the backyard garage and a lot of early basketball lessons were learned in that driveway. I recall we felt welcome there. Thinking about sports Jim got into the high jump in Jr. High. This had some mixed results. One day in gym we were doing track and field events and Jim had done several high jumps. Following the last one he complained about his arm hurting a lot so a visit to school Doctor Squires was required. Sure enough Jim’s arm was broken. As Dr. Squires explained to Jim about the break, he using Jim’s “good” arm as a model, Jim cried out in pain. Yep Jim had broken both his arms! Best to switch to Golf! Jim was the manager of our successful RPS 1960 soccer team.
Just a few of the memories of a friend gone too soon.
Phil Phillips
