After a brief illness, Melissa Rhys Powel died unexpectedly in her sleep on Jan. 4, 2024 at her home in Albany, Ore. She was alone at the time; no cause of death was reported. She was 68.
Known to friends and family as “Lissy” or “Mel,” Melissa was born in Wilmington, Del. on March 3, 1955, the youngest of Barbara and Robert Powel’s five children. Her mother earned a degree in botany at Hunter College and taught elementary school. Her father was a certified public accountant.
According to Melissa’s sister Linnet Hultin, their mother “inspired all her children with a love of plants, habitat, and environments,” a love that Linnet and Melissa, who were “inseparable,” expressed by spending hours exploring the woods and streams behind their Delaware home.
“Aunt Lissy” spent every summer during high school with her sister Robin’s family, taking care of her nieces Stevie and Barbie, who remember walking and exploring the woods together with great fondness. They were amazed that Melissa knew all the trees by name.
She graduated from Newark High School in 1972 and earned a B.S. in ornamental horticulture from the University of Delaware in 1977. Although she did not pursue horticulture as a career, she deployed her knowledge at the family home in Delaware before moving to Provincetown in the late 1970s to be with Linnet.
Melissa fell in love with Provincetown. She worked as a server at Ciro and Sal’s, at the Flagship, and at Café Poyant. Her best friend was Pierre Densley Evans, a larger-than-life Provincetown personality who worked in restaurants and took aura photographs for an astrologer working at Whaler’s Wharf before the fire. She helped raise her nieces Cassie and Erin.
“Her spirit of adventure, love of the arts, and zest for life were contagious,” Linnet said, “and she instilled in all of her nieces similar lifelong passions.”
Melissa’s mother moved to be with her daughter Robin in Oregon, and Melissa followed in 1991, ready after 12 years in Provincetown to swap the sand dunes of the Outer Cape for the forests and mountains of coastal Oregon.
Melissa worked for the city of Corvallis, where she was in charge of accounts for the dept. of public works. She faithfully returned to the Outer Cape every summer for her cherished beach vacation, most recently after she retired in June 2023, to spend July with Linnet, enjoying days on her favorite Truro beaches and nights at the Provincetown restaurants she had worked at many years earlier.
In recent years she and her sister Virginia, a lawyer in Philadelphia, bonded over their love of opera, passed down from their father. Lissy and Ruthie, the pet names they had given each other, chatted often on the phone about their favorite, Verdi’s La Traviata.
During her years in Provincetown, Melissa learned her way around the water, helping Linnet with her lobster pots and catching bluefish to use for bait. In Oregon, she became adept at freshwater fishing, camping and searching for the best trout streams.
Remembered by her family and friends for her striking beauty, her sharp wit, intelligence, artistic talent, and fine sensibility, Melissa was also a reader, a gardener, and an adventurer. “Her death,” Linnet said, “came as a great shock.”
Melissa is survived by her sisters, Robin Powel of Corvallis, Ore., Linnet Hultin of North Truro, and Virginia Powel of Wyndmoor, Pa.; her nieces, Barbie, Stevie, Cassie, and Erin; grandnieces Lissa, Lauren, Carly, Coral, and Lula; grandnephews Ben, Clay, Adin, and Fergus; and a great-grandniece and great-grandnephew.
She was predeceased by her parents, her brother, Christopher “Kit” Powel, and Pierre D. Evans, her friend and partner in thrifting.
Funeral plans have not been finalized. A memorial is planned for August 2024 in Provincetown, with details to be announced.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that friends make donations in Melissa’s memory to their favorite charities.
