Mrs Sarah Powell, President of the Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Mothers Association

Sarah Powell in the Australian Women's Weekly, 24 July 1943, 

just after she'd received the OBE.

Sarah Powell's maiden name was Skewes. She came from a large family of teachers, a number of whom were well known in the Coburg area, although they originally came from Warrenheip near Ballarat.

Her son Thomas Henry Norman Powell, a member of the Australian Flying Corps, died during WW1. Her nephew Stanley Ray, an old boy of Coburg State School, also died, as did her brother Harold Skewes, a teacher with the Victorian Education Department.

Sarah Powell was a tireless worker for the Sailors and Soldiers Mothers Association from the early 1920s. She was its President and also the President of the Coburg branch of the Australian Women's League. She was on the War Memorial Committee, later known as the Shrine of Rememberance. In 1937 she received the Coronation Medal in recognition of her work.

By July 1943 when the Women's Weekly published a feature on her, she’d just received an OBE and was the Life President of the Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Mothers Association, Victoria, having been in the position for 21 years. She was also on the executive of the women's branch of the War Service Fund, Victoria.

Argus, 2 June 1943

When Sarah and her husband Samuel moved to the outer eastern suburbs in the 1930s, she founded the Croydon branch of the Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Mothers Association and attended the branch's annual meeting just five days before she died aged 92 in 1955.

You can read a fuller account of Sarah Powell's public service in the Australian Women's Register.