Laura Powell

Laura Ann Powell

May 10, 1938 ~ July 1, 2019

Laura Ann Powell, born Laura Ann Artis on May 10, 1938 left this life on July 1, 2019 at the age of 81 after fighting multiple iterations of cancer to a stalemate over the course of more than 10 years. She refused to give up a single moment of life on Earth with her family, no matter the pain of treatment. She wanted every single minute she could have—and she took it.

You may have the impression from this that Laura was a stubborn woman—she wasn’t—she was the MOST stubborn woman—it was a trademark. She was stubborn about everything, from the moment she was born—tell her she could not and she would—come Hell or high water. 1938 wasn’t quite the right year for her and the ‘50s and ‘60s not quite the right era. She believed strongly in things that weren’t on the forefront yet. She fought for her right as a woman to work outside the home as a sense of empowerment—something to keep her fast-running mind busy—always figuring out one more thing she could do, improve, change. She left these qualities (including most prominently the stubbornness) to her children and grandchildren.

She did not believe in imposition of inequality—it infuriated her for all of her life. She was 70 years old the day Obama won the Presidency—it brought her happy tears in the same way it did the day he lit the White House in rainbows—these things mattered to her. Watching inequality spend a few years being chipped away gave her happiness. Recent years were more painful as she watched the world try to claw some of that back while feeling powerless to change it.

Laura fought many battles, all her life in ways small and big. She built businesses, lost businesses, made money and lost it. She travelled across the country and out into the world as an army-wife in Germany and Fort Bragg in the ‘50s and ‘60s. She lived a different kind of life—one she wouldn’t have traded—travelling the entire United States over the course of the ‘80s and ‘90s with the love of her life Jim. Laura also loved spending time learning new crafts that she would share with her family and friends. She was a talented oil painter and hand quilted/crocheted for decades; leaving behind a legacy of items that her family and friends can cherish forever.

She leaves behind a large family to grieve. We miss her ability to listen and her ability to talk—about literally anything that might pop to either parties head. Having someone in your life like that is not easily replaced and we will miss her for as long as we live.

Laura’s parents were Willard and Belva Deboard Artis. She leaves behind her husband, Jim Powell; four living children, Jamie Powell of Ogden, Utah; Patrick Chambers and wife Tammy of Fayetteville, North Carolina; Lisa Lowe, of New York; and Gary and his wife Etta Chambers of Richmond, Virginia; as well as her siblings, brother, Steve Artis of North Carolina and sister, Maxine Harrison of Michigan.

She was preceded in death by her parents; her sister, Alma Mary Tradewell; and two of her grown children she loved and missed every day, Cathy and Larry Chambers. She leaves four children, ten grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

Private family services will be held in North Carolina at a later date. Services entrusted to Lindquist’s Ogden Mortuary.

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