University of Tennessee Athletics
UT Basketballer from 1940s Dies in Washington
July 22, 2011 | Men's Basketball
July 22, 2011
By John Painter
UT Media Relations
Funeral services were Friday for former Tennessee basketball letterman Elwood Powers, who died July 14 in Spokane, Wash., following a short illness. He was 92.
Powers lettered three seasons for the Vols under head coach John Mauer, helping UT to a combined 50-15 record from 1940-42. Tennessee won an SEC title in 1942 thanks to a 7-1 league record. One year earlier, UT captured the 1941 SEC tournament championship in Louisville, Ky., winning four games in three days.
Standard procedure in basketball's early years meant the Vols had to win a doubleheader on the final day, March 1, to claim that crown. UT knocked off Florida 47-26 in the semifinals before defeating Kentucky 36-33 for the championship. Tennessee again won a last-day doubleheader for the 1943 title, but Powers already had moved on to more important matters.
Originally from Oliver Springs
The Oliver Springs native entered military service for World War II in the U.S. Army Air Corps. As a B-17 pilot stationed in England, he flew 25 combat missions over Nazi Germany.
Returning from Europe in 1945, Powers relocated to Spokane. Two years earlier and about 100 miles west during pilot training in Moses Lake, Wash., Powers had met his future wife, Dorothy Rochon, a reporter with the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper. The couple married in 1945 and celebrated their 65th anniversary last November.
Born March 30, 1919, in Oliver Springs, E. Elwood Powers was the oldest of three children in the family of Arthur and Esther Powers. Elwood Powers went on to excel both as a student and two-sport athlete at Tennessee, where he also played football (pictured at right) for the legendary Gen. Robert R. Neyland.
Powers carried his athletic skills throughout life, and was a near scratch golfer whose favorite lunch hours were those on the driving range. Powers' professional career was spent in the steel industry, where he held a series of management positions. He retired as regional manager for Portland, Ore.-based ESCO Corp., a manufacturer of specially designed products used in structural, aerospace and other industrial applications.
In honor of Powers' Tennessee loyalties, Friday's funeral service at Spokane's Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist saw the church decorated in orange and white flowers.
Powers is survived by his wife, Dorothy, and several nieces and nephews in Tennessee.
