Thomas Powell

1937 - 2026

If you ever were anywhere along the American River Bike Trail over the past forty years, you probably saw Tom Powell zip past on his bicycle, often in the company of friends and usually pulling ahead of them. Tom, who also helped thousands get started in college and made many other marks in the Sacramento community, died at the age of 88 on Jan. 14, 2026, in the loving care of family and friends.

Tom is survived by Cheryl Powell, his wife of 55 years; three children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. They include his daughter Renee (Kevin), his grandson Wyatt (Monika) and great-children Kinsley and Rowin, and granddaughter Kiya; daughter Ashley (Kevin) and their two sons, Everett and Anson; and son Ryan (Denise) and their children Elise and Ethan.

He had many cousins throughout the Western states, part of the legacy of his transient early childhood. He was raised until about the age of four by his grandparents Otillia (Tillie) and William Wirtz, along with the six of their 13 children still living with them in their dirt farm shack near Outlook, in the Plentywood area of northeastern Montana. Tom was then sent to live with his mother Josephine in Fallon, Nevada, before being returned to Montana at age 7. He was close to his aunts and uncles throughout their lives. (Tom's closest uncle, Sylvester Wirtz of Folsom, died in November of 2025 at the age of 94.).

Tom rejoined his mother and her husband in Shidler, Oklahoma, where he graduated from high school in 1956 and enrolled at Oklahoma State University. After two years at OSU, he moved to Tehama County, California, where he once again lived with his grandmother Tillie and had great adventures with his uncles. He once reported having produced 154-proof moonshine with them, some of which he kept stored in his family home for decades, not to Cheryl's amusement. No one is reported to have successfully drunk it.

He continued his education at Sacramento State College, but soon thereafter received a draft notice from the U.S. Army. He served in South Carolina, conducting tests at the army post's behavioral health clinic, where he developed an interest in psychology. After his Army service, Tom earned his B.A. degree in psychology at Sacramento State College in 1961 and an M.A. in counseling in 1967. He began professional career as a parole agent and as a rehabilitation counselor in 1968, as well as his lifetime of fatherhood with the birth of Renee that same year.

Shortly after his marriage to Cheryl in 1971, Tom began a 30-year career at American River College in Sacramento, where he served first as the college's coordinator with the Operating Engineers Union as they built what we now know as Rancho Murrieta. He then was an academic counselor, faculty adviser to the Student Council and the faculty adviser to a new student club, ARC's first Gay and Lesbian Student Union. His last and longest-held position at the college was as Assessment Center Coordinator. He retired from the college in 2002 but continued to teach statistics part-time in the psychology department for several years.

Tom was not your garden-variety academic. His extraordinary range of abilities, including a penchant for analytical problem-solving, enabled him to design a remarkable addition to the small cinder-block house that he and Cheryl had purchased early in their marriage. His intuitive mastery made outside help largely unnecessary to design the home upward and do all the structural, electrical and mechanical work to add a second floor with a steeply gabled roof. It was a true (and, at times, exhausting) family project as Tom, Cheryl, Ashley and Ryan converted what had appeared to be a rancher's outbuilding into a homey cottage, where he lived nearly all the rest of his life.

If there was the usual, proven way to solve a problem, Tom delighted in creating his own analytical methods in mathematics and calculus. Ryan recalls the time that his dad helped him with a challenging middle school algebra problem by closing the textbook and applying a unique system he had developed long before that was simpler and more practical. This way of thinking was also a characteristic of his extended family: self-reliance, technical skill, and creative problem-solving were common traits shared across generations.

Alongside this analytical bent, Tom painted oil works in the style of the Italian Renaissance, many of which still hang in his home. He sewed and customized his own clothes and was a skilled wood carver. He occasionally made things simply because he could, including a ventriloquist's dummy that delighted neighborhood children every Halloween.

But about that bicycle. Tom was dedicated to physical fitness, first as a runner and weightlifter, and then as a cyclist. Into his early seventies, he competed in the Sacramento Senior Games sprint races, coming close to besting a former Italian pro racer.

Tom, Ryan, and their friends completed many 100-plus-mile rides (cyclists call them Centuries). He pedaled most of the Northern California backroads, from the Redwoods and Sonoma Coast to the top of the Sierra Nevada range. And, of course, on the American River Bike Trail, where his trusty Trek clicked up many of its 51,000 miles. He rode actively until the age of 86.

Tom will be remembered as a genial, resourceful and loyal man who took great pride in his accomplishments and those of his wife and children. He retained the frugal approach to life's resources that he had absorbed on the dusty plains of Montana-he refused to throw away a bicycle tube unless it had been patched six times, or get a new tire until he could clearly see the cord.

He was deeply humble, and most people who knew him only casually would have had no inkling that in this man's shoes stood a skilled craftsman and creator who was himself an industrial revolution.

Tom's passing has left a hole in the lives of his family and friends, who are grateful for the memories, and even the accomplishments that sometimes left them perplexed that he'd gotten there, although he nearly always did.