Pleasant Hill Times co-publisher Jan H. Powell died Wednesday, July 29, at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kans. She was 71 years old.
Jan was diagnosed with IgG4, a rare auto immune disease, at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Ariz., in the spring of 2014. She died of complications following heart valve surgery at the University of Kansas Hospital earlier this year.
Jan had co-published the Time for over 26 years along side her husband, F. Kirk Powell.
She was born in Maryville on August 4, 1943, the daughter of Clarence and Ruth Heusi and graduated from the Warrenton High School in Warrenton, Mo, in 1961. Jan earned a bachelor of science degree in home economics with a major in interior design from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1965.
She and her husband, Kirk, were married in 1965, and they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this past January. The couple lived in Rochester, N.Y., for two years and returned to Missouri in 1968. They lived in Harrisonville before purchasing The Holden Progress in 1975. They managed the Pleasant Hill Times under a lease agreement for a year in 1989 and purchased the weekly newspaper in 1990.
Jan served as secretary of the Missouri Press Association in 1983 and was first lady of MPA when her husband served as president in 1994. She had served on the Pleasant Hill Community Betterment Board and was past secretary of the Pleasant Hill Downtown Association. Kirk and Jan were grand marshals of the Cass County Fair in Pleasant Hill in 2013. She was a member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Harrisonville.
Jan is survived by her husband, Kirk, of the Pleasant Hill home; two daughters, Stacey Soble, San Luis Obispo, Calif., and Vicky Powell-Johnson, Santa Rita, Guam; and four grandchildren, Rachel and Charlie Soble, and Ryan and Matthew Johnson; and cousins Les and Judy Crouch of Las Vegas, Nev., and Herb and Ginger Carter of Pleasant Hill.
Visitation will be held 6-8 p.m. Monday, Aug.3, at the Stanley-Dickey Funeral Home in Pleasant Hill, and the funeral service will be held 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug 4, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Harrisonville. Inurnment at the church.
The Powell Family has requested that donations in Jan’s memory be made to the Missouri Press Foundation’s Journalism Scholarship Fund, 802 Locust Street, Columbia, MO 65201.
