Wednesday, June 22, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
25
Obituaries
ray allen Powers
July 22, 1938 — June 16, 2016
Ray Allen Powers died on
June 16 at Anna’s Home in
Sisters after a six-year strug-
gle with Parkinson’s and
Lewy Body Disease.
Ray was born in Phoenix,
Arizona, to Josephine and
Ralph Powers. The family
moved to Medford, Oregon,
when he was 11 years old.
He attended Griffin Creek
Grade School.
Ray graduated from
Eagle Point High School in
1958, after having served
in the Naval Reserve since
1956. His active duty began
in 1958. He was discharged
from the Navy in 1960.
Ray began working con-
struction in Medford after his
ronald aaron leis
May 22, 1936 — June 18, 2016
Know this: a great deal
of the life of this man is a
mystery even to his family.
No child or wife or relation
knows his story beyond the
part they played themselves
and what stories they can
remember. It’s not that he
was closed about what he
had lived and done, simply
that it’s too much for anyone
to know, too strange to know
whether to take seriously
and now lost to the world.
In the days, weeks, months
and years to come, his family
will try to untangle and piece
together all that they know
of him, to trace a line from
birth to death, to understand
what drove him from point
A to point B, but all their
efforts can only ever amount
to a fraction of the reality
that was Ronald Aaron Leis.
Though 80 years is a short
time to live compared with
many who have gone before
him, if the sum of a person’s
life is truly greater than its
constituent parts; Ronald
Leis’ life extended an order of
magnitude beyond what most
people will ever experience.
B o r n i n S a g i n a w,
Michigan, Ron grew up in
a poor household with three
brothers and a sister. He
distinguished himself aca-
demically in high school
and exhibited great creativ-
ity, participating in drama,
painting and anything that
created something from noth-
ing. When he graduated high
school he went to Capital
University earning a degree in
art, then on to the University
of Michigan where he earned
a masters degree in sculpture.
Ron’s great passion was
art, in particular the many
forms of sculpture, from
glass-blowing and wrought
metal to woodwork and
clay, of which the latter two
discharge. He also painted
billboards and commercial
signs for Dick Walsh, who
later developed an art school
in Ashland. He began selling
real estate in Medford, where
he also began doing remod-
els of homes to sell. He also
worked for Blake, Moffitt
and Towne Paper Company
as a sales representative until
1980.
“He was a heck of a sales-
man,” said his wife, Katie.
“A born seller.”
In 1974, Ray moved to
Corvallis. There, he met
Katie Wilson, whom he mar-
ried in 1976. They remained
married for the rest of his life.
In the six years of his demen-
tia, Ray always remembered:
Pointing to his wedding ring
to tell anyone near, “October
17, 1976,” the day he mar-
ried his true love.
The couple bought
Duedall-Pots office supply in
Albany in 1980. It became a
commercial and retail busi-
ness that they sold in 1994,
when they purchased land in
Central Oregon. They moved
to the Sisters home he built
“from the ground up” in
1995.
The Powers began
A ffordable Window
Coverings in 1999, which
they continued until Ray was
unable to do the construction
because of the Lewy Body
dementia. He always worked
in some manner. Work was
his hobby.
Ray did a tremendous
amount of volunteer work
in Kiwanis and Sisters. He
and Katie fostered infant ani-
mals until they were ready
for adoption and also were
regular volunteers at the
Food Bank. In his shop, Ray
and other Kiwanians assem-
bled the Kiwanis memorial
benches that are seen all over
Sisters.
He is probably mostly
remembered driving his 1932
five-window Ford coupe
wearing his “Mr. Briggs”
baseball cap. He and his Ford
were featured in an article in
a hot-rod magazine.
He is survived by his
wife, Katie; daughter, Julie
(from a previous marriage);
granddaughter, Kellee and
sister, Bertie Hass.
A celebration of life will
be held late in the sum-
mer. The family requests
contributions to Partners in
Care, 2075 N.E. Wyatt Ct.,
Bend, OR, 97702 or OHSU
Lewy Body Research,
where Ray and Katie
agreed to donate his brain
for study. Katie wishes to
thank Absolute Serenity and
Ashley for their care of Ray
in Anna’s Home.
would ultimately come to
define his life. He may have
been described as counter-
culture when seen creating
art installations at Woodstock
or working alongside glass-
blowers to form molten cre-
ations, but he was ever true
to himself and his borders
were rigid. Uninfluenced by
others he had no interest in
drugs or political revolution
but remained Ron and moved
forward, driven by unseen
currents that only he felt.
People’s paths intersected
with and diverged from his,
and by the time he had left
Michigan and was living in
Florida he had two daugh-
ters, Ginger and Debbie; and
two sons, Aaron and Britt.
Incidentally he had also had
two wives by this point;
Merle and Phillis.
Having grown up with
little, Ron knew both how
to get by on meager means
and, as is rare amongst peo-
ple, recognized the price
of wealth and the trappings
of life; rather than being
additive he saw that to pur-
sue them would cost him
his passion. Eschewing the
well-worn path, he followed
Frost into the forest and wan-
dered until the oaks and elms
turned to juniper and pine and
the mountains rose on the
horizon. Leaving his life in
Florida, teaching as a profes-
sor of art at the University of
Miami, he purchased an old
fire-engine and loaded Aaron
and his belongings onto it. “I
wanted to see the mountains,”
he would later say, so he left
Florida and drove west with
no intended destination until
his fire-engine broke down in
the town of Sisters, Oregon
and he decided it was a sign
that was where he was sup-
posed to be. That was 1974.
Ron built his life with
his hands in this town. He
rented a storefront and
opened a pottery and began
to create. Some of his work
was abstract, some utile, all
of it touched by his art. Here
he met a woman who would
become his third wife, Heidi;
they bought a small, yellow
house in town and built it into
a pottery with a storefront on
the east side and the house-
hold on the west side. Behind
the house he ran pipes and
propane burners and stacked
bricks to build a kiln that
would support his art and his
family for years to come. In
this house four of his chil-
dren; Amber, Micah, Laura
and Crystal, would be born,
midwifed by a woman who
would one day own a bakery
next door. They were born in
the same room from which
he would ultimately slip the
surly bonds of this life.
Time passed and the town
of Sisters grew around the
small yellow house, trans-
forming empty lots into auto-
parts stores and pizzerias.
Businesses came and went
but the kiln still glowed red at
night and still he made his art.
It was in this house that
he found the basis for his
faith as a Christian. Ask a
typical Christian why they’re
a Christian and they’ll tell
you that’s how they were
raised. Ask Ron why he was
a Christian and he’d tell you
about cursing at God during
a rainstorm that was making
his roof leak and at the peak
of his cursing when he yelled
at God “You think you’re so
great? I could do a better job
than you!” God responded
with an almighty flash of
lightning and thunder that
rocked the house. He found
God on his knees beneath a
leaking roof that didn’t seem
like such a big problem after
all.
He became a pastor after
that and for the next several
years led a congregation of
churchgoers who unabash-
edly dug into what God and
faith meant and how it related
to them in the world. In the
end, when his mind was rav-
aged by Alzheimer’s dis-
ease, when he was unable to
articulate simple questions or
answers, Ron’s last holdout
was his ability to pray. He’d
be damned before he lost his
connection to God.
If art was his passion in
life, greater still was his pas-
sion for his children, the eight
he fathered and the two still
to join his life’s tapestry.
Once more he found himself
unmarried and making pot-
tery in the town of Sisters
and once more a path crossed
his which would wind itself
about his thread until the end
of his mortal days; his fourth
and final wife, Shawn. She
brought with her two children
who he would love as much
as his own, Justin and Nicole.
Ten children all told; a nice,
even number.
Much of his later years
were spent remodeling a
green-colored house, trying to
build a space large enough to
house his family of eight. He
tackled this challenge with his
two hands and wrestled with
it for years as winters came
early and caught the house
with the roof open, wreak-
ing havoc on the structure.
As the house was taken down
to the foundation and built
from the bottom up he fought
with those two hands without
a care for anything else. As
one by one his children grew
and left the nest he worked to
complete the house. Though
two grew and left before
it was completed, taking
flight from the small yellow
house, the remainder called
the green house home and it
served its purpose until the
youngest set out to challenge
the world. Then it was lost.
In the end, banks and
notices taken into account,
Ron found himself back in
that small, yellow house, in
the town of Sisters, Oregon,
where he had broken down
in his fire engine all those
years ago. The town he
felt ordained to live in. In
some deep, inexplicable
way, he and that house were
entwined, and that he should
take his final breath there is
appropriate. Nobody who
loved him would have had it
any other way, nor would he.
Ron, my dad, was a
good man. He loved many
and judged few. He opened
that small yellow house to
vagrants who needed a place
to sleep, friends in need
and family near and far and
somehow it embodied all
that he was. He lived his life
freely like no one else I have
ever known. He was never
drunk or violent and though
he wrestled with his own
demons he loved his fam-
ily more than his own life.
No man leaves this life sin-
less, but as he goes now to
meet the God he has loved so
faithfully for so long I know
that he will be welcome. His
Father will smile at him and
say “Well done, my good and
faithful servant.”
We are indebted to
Partners in Care Hospice
for the support they gave
Ron and our family during
the last part of his journey.
Memorial contributions in
Ron’s name can be made at
www.partnersbend.org.
A memorial service will
be held in a few months.