Big Brothers Big Sisters match lasts 44 years — and counting

IOWA CITY — Telling a story is a team effort for Steve Warner and Jason Powers.

“Tell the story about the hotel,” said Warner, 77, of Iowa City.

“We were heading west …” said Powers, 51, of Iowa City.

“In York, Nebraska,” Warner added.

Powers and Mike Warner, Steve’s son, were teenagers swimming in the hotel pool when Mike pointed out a cluster of girls across the water. Powers left the pool for a few minutes and when he returned, Mike told him the girls had asked about him.

“Mike tells me, ‘they came over. You should go say hi’,” Powers recalled.

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Warner grinned. He knows the end of the story, the part where Powers goes over to talk with the girls, who look at him like he’s crazy because they hadn’t talked with Mike at all.

The men, now both with silver in their hair, met 44 years ago through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Johnson County, which matches children facing adversity with caring adults for one-on-one mentoring. Powers was a 7-year-old first-grader at Horn Elementary whose single mom thought he needed a male role model. Warner, 33, was going through a divorce and could see his own son only twice a month.

While many of the program’s matches last just a few formative years, Powers’ and Warner’s relationship has endured through good times (Warner was a groomsman in Powers’ 1999 wedding) and hard times (Powers waited in the hospital while Warner had open-heart surgery in 2018).

“Without any reservation, Steve is 100 percent part of our family,” said Powers, now a family medicine doctor at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. “While I wouldn’t say you were like my father, you were the closest thing I ever had.”

Big Brothers Big Sisters loses sponsor agency

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Johnson County is preparing for its major annual fundraiser, Bowl for Kids Sake, Feb. 24, 25 and 28 and March 1 in Iowa City. Through team and individual pledges, corporate sponsorships and a vacation raffle, it hopes to raise $138,000, or about one-quarter of its annual budget, Director Daleta Thurness said.

The 2024 event is more important than ever as the Johnson County organization is working to be a stand-alone nonprofit after Iowa State University Extension decided in October to end its sponsorship. The change means it will have to pay for services like accounting, payroll processing and information technology starting in January.

“We figured if we just have 20 new teams, that will increase our revenue significantly enough,” Thurness said of Bowl for Kids Sake.

ISU Extension’s insurance company said it wouldn’t provide coverage because of the one-on-one mentoring provided through the organization. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Johnson County has never had a claim of abuse in its 47-year history, leaders said.

The Johnson County program matched 262 children with 249 adults in fiscal 2023.

Match brings mentorship and memories

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In the early years of their match, Warner would take Powers for a meal or a movie. He also helped the boy make a toy wooden car for the Boy Scouts’ Pinewood Derby. Powers has strong memories of visiting Warner’s log cabin in north Iowa City and buying buy ice cream at a small dairy across the road.

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Warner took Powers on his first off-the-grid camping trip, to Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest in Wyoming, where they cooked over a fire, purified their own drinking water and Mike Warner and Powers bathed in a stream.

Warner, now retired, owned Warner’s Custom Painting, specializing in interior painting. In the summer, he hired teenagers, including his son, Mike, and Powers to paint the exterior of Iowa City houses.

“Showing up, being accountable, making real money, learning how to save it,” Powers said of some of the lessons he learned while working for Warner. “More than anything, realizing that when you’re on the job, you’re working. You’re not there just to socialize.”

When Powers went to college and then medical school at the UI, the men saw each other less often but stayed in touch.

“We still had enough in common, we would get together for birthdays or holidays, just like family members would,” Powers said. Then he moved to Colorado for his residency. “When we moved back, then Jamie, my wife, got to know Steve. Then it was a whole other level.”

“She’s the daughter I never had,” Warner said of Jamie Powers, who owns DeLuxe Cakes and Pastries in Iowa City.

Warner was an early supporter of Jamie Powers’ idea to open the bakery in 2003. Painting houses, he’d gotten to know many doctors’ wives who didn’t work outside the home and felt isolated. He helped Jamie and Jason Powers paint the bakery and refinish the wood floors.

Mentorship continues to next generation

Most days, the older man finds himself on a red vinyl stool at the counter in DeLuxe, drinking coffee and talking with employees or customers.

He also spends holidays with the Powers and enjoys talking with the couple’s children, Evelyn, 18, and Marty, 16. His Thanksgiving conversation with Evelyn was about how he’s going to teach her to like coffee when she goes to college next year at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, he said.

As a parent, Jason Powers wants to recreate some of the pivotal experiences he had with Warner growing up. “This past summer, I put on Steve’s hat and took three teenagers to Wyoming,” he said. “It was super nostalgic for me.”

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