February 6, 1885 – November 1, 1913. Gramp's natural father — the name, and little else, that came down the line.
He was born in Grant County, Oregon, a son of Stanton R. Powers, and grew up around Bishop before the family moved south to Norwalk; he ranched near Downey. In the summer of 1912 the Inyo Register ran a small notice — “Fred L. Powers… was to be married at Norwalk, Cal., July 16th, to Miss Helen Rickard.” A son, Fred, followed in August 1913.
He never got to know him. That November, at twenty-eight, a tractor accident put him in the Angelus Hospital in Los Angeles; a few days later, of a fistula, he died. He was buried at Downey. Helen was a widow within sixteen months of the wedding — she would marry twice more. The boy kept his father’s surname as a middle name and carried it the rest of his life.