Evanston entrepreneur and civic booster Hecky Powell, who started a mini-empire with an acclaimed rib restaurant where many teenagers landed their first jobs, died Friday after being exposed to the coronavirus.
Hecky’s Barbecue’s motto was “It’s the Sauce.” That appeared on the bottles of of sauce he sold in stores and shipped all over the world.
He made thousands of pounds of ribs a week and provided catering for events including Chicago Bears and Northwestern Wildcats games.
When he opened his restaurant in 1983, Mr. Powell called on Leon Finney Sr., one of Chicago’s most renowned pitmasters, for advice.
“He told me to come down and talk to him,” Mr. Powell said in a 2008 Chicago Sun-Times interview. “He taught me how to buy ribs, when to buy them, how to store them. He was just incredible.”
Mr. Powell, who was in his 70s, started the Forrest E. Powell Foundation, named for his father, which bestowed music scholarships and vocational grants to students.
“There’s a lot of kids who don’t have the desire or ability to go to college. Hecky supported the youth,” said his sister Debbie, who said he died Friday morning in Evanston.
Mr. Powell also served on the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 elementary school board.
He was a well-known figure around Evanston, where he and then-Mayor Lorraine Morton made a bet in 1996 that Northwestern would best the University of Southern California in the Rose Bowl. When the Wildcats lost, Mr. Powell had to cook ribs and chicken for the Los Angeles City Council.
Forrest E. Powell passed his strong work ethic along to young Hecky and the rest of his children, according to Mr. Powell’s sister.
His mother Verna, who worked in his restaurant at Emerson Street and Green Bay Road, was a native of New Orleans whose Creole recipes inspired the seasonings and tantalized the customers.
For a time, Mr. Powell also operated a Hecky’s at Halsted and Division streets on the North Side of Chicago and one at another North Shore location, his sister said.
Explaining his rib methodology, he told the Sun-Times it went like this: Apply a dry rub — based on his mother’s secret recipe — and follow that with 24 to 48 hours of grilling in a smoker. Then, he’d heat the sauce and slather it on.
Years ago, Mr. Powell survived a bout of liver disease thanks to a living donor who gave him part of a liver.
The coronavirus pandemic has made grieving especially hard, his sister said.
“You can’t go over and console and hug,” she said. “You have to grieve differently.”
Mr. Powell is survived by his wife Cheryl Judice, several children, his mother and eight siblings.
