John E. Powers

POWERS, JOHN E. (1935 ~ 2023). The following is a biography for John E. Powers, former Justice, Court of Appeals, Third District of Texas. The biography was provided by the Powers family.

JOHN POWERS

A sixth-generation Texan, John was born in 1935 in Fort Worth, where his father was a baker.  He graduated Lubbock High School and earned baccalaureate and law degrees at the University of Texas at Austin.  He practiced law in Austin twelve years, ten of them in partnership with William S. Rose, before election to the Court of Appeals at Austin in 1981, where he served for over twenty years.  He retired in 2003.

Following graduation from law school, he received a direct commission into the Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps.  In 1992 he was a senior commissioner on the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Military Review in Washington, D.C., and after twenty-two years of service in the U. S. Naval Reserve retired in 1994 in the grade of captain.

In addition to his numerous legal writings, he co-authored, with his wife, Deborah, Texas Painters, Sculptors& Graphic  Artists: A Biographical Dictionary of Artists in Texas before 1942 (2000), and was the author of The First Texas Navy (2006).  

Justice Powers was survived by his wife of fifty-nine years, Deborah Daniels Powers, their two daughters, Ann Powers Giles of Austin and Catherine Powers and her husband James Guy of Bastrop, and ten grandchildren (Anna Elizabeth, Sarah Catherine, Mary Caroline, and John Thomas Giles; James Corder and his wife Claudia McMillan, Madison Grace, Travis William, Martha Jane, Emily Ann, and John David Guy). 

He was member of the Texas Bar Foundation and a member of the Council of the Administrative and Public Law Section of the State Bar.  He was chairman of the Council during 1990-1991.

A small gathering graveside at the Texas State Cemetery began with a U.S. Naval Reserve honor guard and was officiated by Pastor Robert L. Bolender, Jr. of Austin Bible Church.