HistClanIrene

Clarence was the 4th child of Richard and Millicent Powers, and was born
in 1897 in Norwalk, Ohio.. I don't know much about his early life, except
that he began seeing Aunt Irene in 1916 when he would have been 19 and
she 17. They saw each other nearly every day for the entire year.

The next year, 1917, America joined the war in Europe and Uncle Clarence
became part of Company 'G', 145th Infantry, made up entirely of men from
Huron County.

His unit mustered in on July 15th, 1917 . On August 5th, 1917, they were
sent to Montgomery, Alabama to Camp Sheridan for nearly a full year of
training. I have an entire album of pictures that Uncle Clarence took while
in camp.

Uncle Clarence must have already planned on running a Woolworth store
by this time. In a letter to Aunt Irene as he was on his way to New York
City, to embark to France, he mentioned that he hoped he would get to see
the Woolworth Building while he was there. The ship that his unit and
others took to France was the famous Leviathan. This had been a German
luxury liner that happened to be in New York when war was declared. The
U.S. government siezed the ship and began using it as a troop transport.
The German's learned of the ships' departure and sent two submarines to
sink it. Providence allowed the ship to leave two days ahead of schedule
and the subs never found it.

Company G arrived in France on June 22, 1918. They made it to the front
lines and saw their first real action on August 7th. During this battle Uncle
Clarence's trench was overrun by some advancing Germans; apparently
he lost his gun in the struggle and ended up killing a German with his
trench knife. In so doing he became the first man in company G to kill one
of the enemy. He wrote home to Aunt Irene that many men who came home
from this war would be very different than when they left.

Once, early on in the war, they came under a mustard gas attack. Some of
the men including Uncle Clarence jumped into the trenches, not knowing
that the gas settled in the lowest places. His throat was burned by the gas
and for the rest of his life he suffered periodically from throat ailments
attributed to the injury.

Company G fought in almost every major battle in France in World War I,
including Baccarat, Havecourt, the Argonne Forest, St. Mihiel, and
Ypres-Lys. The finally ended up in Belgium after the armistace was signed
in November, 1918. They would not return home until March 30, 1919.

After the war ended he began his career with Woolworths, probably with
some type of apprenticeship. He obviously wanted to have an established
business before he and Aunt Irene could marry. In 1922 he was given his
own store, a new Woolworths, in Medina, New York. Several months later
he was transferred to Findlay, Ohio only 55 miles from Norwalk. He and
Aunt Irene were married in early 1924. They would run Woolworth stores in
Findlay, Fostoria, Mansfield and Dayton over the next 20 years. During this
time he and Aunt Irene wanted children badly but for some reason were
never able to have any. Like Grandpa and Grandma Powers they got
involved in numerous civic organizations and Uncle Clarence became an
avid bowler.

He switched to the bakery business during World War II and worked for a
Ray's Bakery in Findlay. After the war he returned to the 5 and 10 cent
store business and took a job as manager of Lendzon's 5 and 10 store in
Hamtramck, Michigan, an area of Detroit. They would run numerous
Lendzon's around the Detroit area for another 20 years. In 1965 a shopping
mall opened near their store. Aunt Irene said that the first day that it was
open their store was nearly empty the entire day. Clarence kept telling her
that their customers would come back; the new-ness of the mall would
wear off and they would come back. But they didn't; within a month they
were out of business. The idea of what a `store' was had changed.

He was 68 and she was 66. They didn't have the means or the energy to
start over somewhere else, so they decided to retire to Norwalk and 30
Harris Avenue. They had been renting the house out, but now they moved
back in. They were somewhat defeated in spirit, so Grandpa R.C.Powers
furnished them with new items to spruce up the house. They lived for the
next 15 years together in the house that they had come to know each other
in over 48 years before.

Uncle Clarence died in 1980 from throat cancer, he was 83. Although he
was a heavy cigar and pipe smoker, Aunt Irene attributed the cancer to his
exposure to mustard gas during the war. After his death the life seemed to
go out of her for a while, but then she became mobile again. She lived
alone for another 15 years before passing away in 1995 at the age of 96.
Although she was confined to a wheel chair, she always maintained her
sense of dignity and came out of her room every morning dressed in a
bright colored dress, with a string of pearls around her neck.