Florida Catholic | Obituary

OBITUARY

Barbara Powers cared for people with AIDS

Published: 12.07.07

FORT LAUDERDALE | A few weeks before she died, Barbara Powers received the Lifetime of Service award from Broward County’s World AIDS Day committee. The recognition capped a life of service that touched hundreds of people, judging by the outpouring of response to the news of her death Nov. 16.

Powers, 69, had been diagnosed with advanced bone cancer a few weeks after her July 2007 retirement from Catholic Charities. She had worked with the Broward AIDS ministry since 1999, leading “care teams” that provided spiritual and material support for people with AIDS and their families.

Her daughter, Annmarie Fletcher, of Fort Lauderdale, started a journal and guestbook at www.caringbridge.org to keep family and friends updated on her mother’s condition.

Some of the entries:

“I was privileged to work with her at Catholic Charities for many years. She has to be in heaven, as she did so much good on earth,” wrote Vicki Kaufmann, who oversaw the work of Catholic Charities in Broward County for 13 years, until her own retirement this year.

“Her life was a living witness of her Gospel-based beliefs,” wrote Irene Miranda, who worked as HIV/AIDS educator for Catholic Charities and now directs the AIDS ministry for the Archdiocese of Atlanta. “I am confident that she has joined the communion of saints and will be interceding for us on earth as she enjoys eternal life.”

Powers was a graduate of Central Catholic High School, now St. Thomas Aquinas High School. A native of Connecticut, her parents had moved to south Florida when she was a child. Her family was among the founding members of St. John the Baptist Parish in Fort Lauderdale, where her funeral Mass was celebrated Nov. 20. She was the first women’s guild officer.

Powers worked as a teacher before joining Catholic Charities. Her involvement with HIV/AIDS ministry stemmed from personal experience: one of her brothers had died of complications from AIDS, and her son, Robert Powers Jr., now 46, was diagnosed with the disease in 1983.

“She started with me as a volunteer,” said Father Dennis Rausch, who founded Catholic Charities’ care team program in 1986.

She became a paid staff member in 1999 and succeeded Father Rausch in 2004 when he retired as director of the ministry.

“Barbara was a real loving and compassionate person to everybody that she met. She was especially caring toward our clients living with HIV/AIDS,” he said.

At the funeral Mass, Father Rausch read a letter from Powers to her family members: her husband, Bob; daughter Annmarie and son Bob, both residents of south Florida; her other daughter Cay Perr Fulop of Asheville, N.C.; her four grandchildren, two girls and two boys; and four brothers who also live in south Florida.

“She was well-prepared for death and saw her death as a going home to be with God,” said Father Rausch, who visited Powers every day for the last three weeks of her life. “She was very close to the Blessed Mother and she was very much at peace when she died because she was a woman of deep faith.”

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Barbara Powers cared for people with AIDS

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