How appropriate that the gentle, jocular humanist Walter S. Powell should be remembered through music. A man of all seasons, he was known to figure skaters as a lovable counselor, to businessmen as an able director, to fellow St. Louisans for his dedicated involvement in civic affairs, to artists as a generous and understanding patron. Powell Symphony Hall, the new home for the St. Louis Symphony, will be a living memorial to a man of noble spirit.

St. Louisans were stunned when Mrs. Helen Lamb Powell‘s one-million-dollar gift to the Symphony Society was announced. Though local citizenry had long been aware of the generous amounts of time the Powells had given to municipal affairs, their financial contributions had always been modest. The trust fund has injected new life into the organization, enabling the Society to forge ahead in its plans for total refurbishing of the opulent forty-one-year-old St. Louis Theatre, selected as a site because of the already proven excellence of its acoustics. “I had been thinking of what organization I could give to in commemoration of Mr. Powell,” Mrs. Powell told newspaper reporters. “When I read that the Symphony might fold, that made up my mind. We had always loved the Symphony.”

And so did figure skaters love Walter Powell. Juvenescent in mind and spirit, he sought the company of the young for whom he was confidant, counselor and friend. In this capacity, he accompanied the U.S. World Team in that fateful trip to Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1961 and perished with them when the airplane crashed outside Brussels. His place has been hard to fill.

Starting with his active participation in figure skating as a young man, Walter Powell went on to found the St. Louis FSC. With his partner-wife, Helen, he was active at Sunday night dance sessions almost to the time of his death. It could be said that he devoted nearly a lifetime to figure skating – President of the USFSA, 1943 to 1946, World Referee in both Figures and Dance, member of the Council of the International Skating Union. At the time of his last trip with beloved associates, Walter Powell was an elected member of the USFSA Executive Committee and a Representative to the ISU. His international stature in the sport was greatly respected in European figure skating circles. “If ever an ambassador was persona grata,” wrote F. Ritter Shumway after attending several ISU congresses, “it was Walter Powell. His gentle, self-effacing effectiveness was held in high regard amongst his colleagues.” Such integrity was an intrinsic part of Walter Powell’s involvement with life.

From 1926 until 1951 Mr. Powell was a director and manager of the Brown Shoe Company in St. Louis, having started in the leather business with his family’s tanning firm in Gowanda, New York. Through his wife’s interest in anesthesiology (she founded the Barnes Hospital School of Anesthesia), he came to know so much about anesthesia and medicine that many people assumed he was a doctor. A known devotee of painting, sculpture, ballet and music, it still came as a surprise to St. Louisans that such a large gift should come to the Symphony from the widow of a man who was not a musician. But Helen Lamb Powell must have been as wise as her husband in the knowledge that spirits lifted by music for generations to come would represent an on-going affirmation of Walter Powell’s philosophy for living. “He would have been too modest to give a gift like this,” she said. “I’m sure he knows— and that he is embarrassed, but pleased.”

Courtesy of Skating Magazine