Alma Powell, 86, Esteemed Military Spouse of a Revered Statesman, Dies

Her quiet, elegant manner added to the mystique behind her husband, Colin Powell, and she figured strongly into his decision not to run for president in 1996.

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Alma Powell in 1990. “She has that sort of dignity and grace that spin masters can’t create,” Carl Sferrazza Anthony, the author of a history of first ladies, said of Mrs. Powell years later.

Alma Powell, an advocate for children, literacy and military families who was the quiet force alongside her husband, Colin L. Powell, the revered military commander, secretary of state and national security adviser, and who played a crucial role in his decision not to seek the presidency in 1996, died on Sunday in Alexandria, Va. She was 86.

Her son, Michael, confirmed the death, in a hospital, but did not specify a cause.

When he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, more than two years after the end of the Gulf War, Mr. Powell, who died in 2021, was by all measures the country’s most popular political figure. A military hero and commander beloved by both Democrats and Republicans, he was often called the Black Eisenhower. As Washingtonian magazine once noted, Mr. Powell had “virtually no known enemies — in a town where everyone of consequence is disliked by someone else of consequence.”

Ms. Powell was the consummate military wife, an exemplar of resilience and discipline — Mr. Powell had served two tours in Vietnam at the start of their marriage — whose elegance and experience bolstered her husband’s mystique.

ImageMrs. Powell at her husband’s side as the retired four-star general announced in late 1995 that he would not seek the White House the next year. Asked if her battle with depression, which became public while he was weighing a run, had affected his decision, he said certainly not: “It’s not a family secret.”Credit…Dudley M. Brooks/The The Washington Post, via Getty Images

In Washington, the Powells were unicorns: a power couple who nonetheless disdained power.

“Neither of them wore their ranks on their shoulder,” Sally Quinn, the longtime Washington Post columnist, said in an interview. “I can’t think of anyone else in this town — ever — who had that kind of power and wielded it less. It just didn’t impress them.”

When Mr. Powell’s advisers and party members on both sides of the aisle clamored for him to run for president in the 1996 race, they held their breath and looked to Mrs. Powell. Her husband agonized for months, finally declaring a party affiliation as a Republican, albeit a moderate one. During that time the couple weathered blowback from a news article that Mrs. Powell suffered from depression and was taking medication for it — a report, which first appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and then Newsweek, that many felt was an underhanded attempt to derail Mr. Powell’s putative campaign.

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