 |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |
Business & Industry Hall of FameMamon Powers, Jr.
Twelve years ago, Mamon Powers said he had found that the more a person gives back to the community, the greater is that person's success.
By that measure, Powers is a successful man.
Powers, 59, is president and CEO of Powers and Sons Construction Co. Inc., a general contracting and construction management firm with offices in Gary, Chicago and Indianapolis.
He also is a member of the first class of inductees into the Northwest Indiana Business and Industry Hall of Fame.
Softspoken and unassuming, Powers said he often is surprised when someone refers to him as a successful businessman.
"It all depends on the kind of day I'm having," he said. "Success is a relative term. It depends on your frame of reference."
Powers said he tells schoolchildren that when a child is in sixth grade, that child is perceived as successful by a fifth-grader, who knows the older child has achieved more.
"Someone is always watching," he said, adding no one can measure the impact they have on others.
With that in mind, as well as with an interest toward bringing more African-American young people into the business of construction, Powers' company began offering scholarships and internships to Gary high school students in 1992. He remembers one 15-year-old girl who accepted a job offer he made to students. She excelled with blueprints and more, earned her degree and still is with the company. Such experiences are very gratifying, he said.
"We also take students on field trips to see the business side of construction," Powers said, adding the trips are aimed at illustrating that construction is far more than laying bricks.
Powers said he was 11 years old when he began working for his father, Mamon Powers Sr., who would found Powers and Sons in 1967.
By the early 1970s, the senior Powers had expanded the home-building enterprise by adding industrial, institutional and commercial construction. British Petroleum, Eli Lilly, The Methodist Hospitals, University of Chicago Hospitals, and the state of Indiana are counted among its clients today.
Powers Jr. joined the company in 1971 after securing a degree in civil engineering from Purdue University.
"I left a job with what was then Amoco to go to work with my father. I didn't ask for any pay and he didn't offer any," Powers recalled, adding, "My heart was here."
The drive and determination he has exhibited, Powers said, has been nourished by events.
"One of the driving forces for me comes from the '50s. I remember the steel mills went on strike, and, what seemed like two to three days later to me, folks were coming by asking my father for money," Powers said, adding the impact of that lesson never left him.
"It taught me that I didn't want to depend on a paycheck from someone else."
Powers serves on the Purdue University Board of Trustees and is a trustee and past president of Boys & Girls Clubs of Northwest Indiana. He is on the board of directors for The Methodist Hospitals of Gary and Merrillville, a member and former president of the Calumet Chapter of the Indiana Society of Professional Engineers, a member of the regional board of directors of Fifth Third Bank and numerous other affiliations.
Powers received the Purdue University Civil Engineering Alumni Achievement Award in 2002 and the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award in 2003 from the Purdue University Schools of Engineers.
He and his wife Cynthia, who operates Powers Realty, which the couple founded early in their marriage, have two children, both of whom are Purdue alumni.
Kelly Powers Baria, who has a civil engineering degree, works on special projects at Powers and Sons. Mamon Powers III, has an MBA and works in the firm's Indianapolis office.
Story posted: 8/15/2008
