Richard H. Powell’s parents divorced when he was a young boy. “My mother, Virlee (Grimes) Powell, raised me and my two sisters,” he said. “I gained experience later through military training, and developed a love for education.”

He attained his doctorate and spent more than 40 years as a professional educator. He worked with students, teachers, administrators and parents within all levels of education from elementary to university.
Powell, 78, graduated from Muscatine High School in 1950.

He played basketball in high school, and his teammates included Dick Stanley, George Hahn and Tom Johnson. He earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from the former Iowa State Teachers College in 1958, and his doctorate in education from the University of Arizona in 1968.

Powell married his Muscatine High School sweetheart, Grace (Peggy) Van Camp. “We started going together in high school in 1949, and were married in Muscatine in 1953 after I returned from Korea,” Powell said.

Dick Powell started his career as a high school history teacher in Davenport after he and Peggy graduated from Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls. “We decided to head south to Tucson after one year in Davenport,” he said.

Powell was a history teacher at Amphitheater High School in Tucson from 1958-65. Peggy was also a teacher in the elementary grades. Powell worked two years, 1970-71, as an evaluation specialist for Epic Diversified Systems Inc. He traveled to many states to assist school district evaluate educational programs, and served as an educational auditor for Title III and Title VII programs in California, Arkansas, Louisiana and the Island of Guam.

He served as the middle school principal for the Catalina Foothills school district in Tucson in 1972-76, and was then asked to work three years with alternative programs primarily for high school dropouts. He was the principal of the Amphitheater School District alternative high school that utilized daytime and evening classes to accommodate the students who weren’t making it in the traditional high schools.

“We had about 300 young men and women each year in the alternative high school, and most of them went on to earn their high school diplomas. These kids are not dumb, but they became dropouts for a variety of reasons: family situations, jobs, etc. Working with these young people in the afternoon or evenings, often on an individual basis, we were able to help many of them succeed,” he said.

After retiring from the public school system, Powell was employed from 1986 through 2003 by Chapman University in Tucson as a supervisor of student teachers, and instructor for teacher methods, evaluation and self-esteem. This involved traveling to other locations maintained by Chapman in Arizona and California.

Powell has been an active elder in the Catalina Foothills (PCA) Presbyterian Church. He was one of the co-founders of the Catalina Foothills Christian School in Tucson, and has served on the school board for the past five years. The K-12 school has 650 students.