County activist led panels on access

Nadia Powers, a longtime community activist who served as chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Commission on Disabilities and the county’s Commission on Aging in the 1990s, died April 13 of liver cancer. She was 74.

Powers, who had impaired vision for most of her life and was completely blind for the last 10 years, died at her home in Los Angeles, according to her husband, James Powers.

“I was impressed with Nadia Powers from the minute I met her,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina said in an interview with The Times. “She was tenacious, goal-oriented, commanding, and so service-oriented.”

Powers worked on a number of projects to facilitate access to public services for the disabled and senior citizens. One of her recent projects involved helping seniors learn to use the public transportation system and take advantage of subsidies available to them.

“Access was Nadia’s priority,” Molina said. “She wanted to make it easier for people to get the services that allow them to do what they want to do.”

When Powers enrolled at UCLA as an undergraduate in her late 40s, she also embarked on a career in community involvement. She became founder of the UCLA Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Disability, whose mission was to make the campus fully accessible for people with disabilities. She served as vice chairwoman and later was elected chairwoman of the committee. Parking access for the disabled, accessible buses and other campus services were implemented as a result of the committee’s efforts.

After she graduated in 1985, Powers stayed involved at UCLA. She founded the school’s Legal Society on Disability and helped organize workshops and sensitivity training for faculty members. She also created the Nadia Powers Award, given annually to a student whose project furthers the understanding of people with disabilities.

As her eyesight continued to fail and she could no longer drive, Powers hired a driver and learned to read Braille. “No matter what was going on with her own health, Nadia didn’t skip a beat,” Kathy Molini, director of the UCLA Office for Students With Disabilities, said. “She knew she could be instrumental in making things happen, and she kept going.”

She was born Nadia Debora Rosenbloom in Alexandria, Egypt, on Aug. 16, 1933. As a teenager she joined a Zionist group that was supplying arms to Israel.

She was wanted by Egyptian authorities when she escaped to France. There, she was sent to a displaced persons camp, where she spent more than one year.

During that time she was recruited by members of Palmach, an Israeli military organization.

During a training session she fell and hit her head, causing blindness in one eye and permanently damaging her other eye.

After being released from the camp with the help of Israeli authorities, she went to live in Israel.

At about age 20, she visited her mother, who was living in Monterey, Calif., and enrolled in Catholic instruction classes at a church, where she met Powers, her future husband.

They married in June 1954.

The next year they moved to Los Angeles when he got a job with a law firm.

The couple had five children. When they were grown, Powers earned an associate’s degree at Valley College in 1980, then entered UCLA to earn a bachelor’s in anthropology.

Among the many community service awards Powers received was recognition as the 2006 Volunteer of the Year by Los Angeles County. That same year she received a Distinguished Service Award from the County Commission on Aging.

In addition to her husband, Powers is survived by sons George, David and Robert; daughters Claire Baxter and Tania Alexander; and nine grandchildren.

Services have been held.

--

mary.rourke@latimes.com