Jim’s big, broad wings

March 17th, 2009 at 01:05pm Linda Grist Cunningham

Jim Powers knows how to make friends. The instruction sheet is simple: To have friends, be one. It’s the doing that’s so darn hard.

Last night at Rockford city council meeting, aldermen honorarily renamed Huffman Boulevard for Jim: Col. Ret. Jim Powers Parkway. (Here’s our story just posted to rrstar.com by veteran reporter Chris Green.) Renaming the street is cool, but it’s little more than an asterisk on the back story — a story that started with a handful of Jim’s friends, including Mike Diventi and John Gile, wanting to do something to honor this “citizen servant” and spread to what has become a connecting of the dots among those Jim touches almost every day. He is a model for being a friend.

Jim Powers was one of my e-mail “pen pals.” For years before e-mail was the way to do business, Jim and I shared the occasional note. He has always been eager to befriend, to teach, to encourage. He is one of the few people who actually knows how to constructively criticize. It was Jim who sparked my interest in creating neighborhood networks via the Web. I still have Jim’s passionate business plan in a folder awaiting the time when technology will allow me and rrstar.com to accomplish what Jim dreamed about a decade ago.

As Mike and Jim’s closest friends planned this street renaming — in secret I should add — they included me in their e-mail strings. One thing came crystal clear as I sifted through the dozens of names on the e-mail strings: They read like a who’s who of titled people, elected people, little people, old people and young ones.

I suspect most of us on those strings know at least OF each other. What we probably did not know until now was that we all have Jim Powers in common. Those are pretty darn broad wings, Jim. Hugs!

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized