Bill Porter never could resist the lure of the road in April. When he was in college, he quit every spring to hitchhike around the country.
Bill was born in Russellville and grew up in Sheffield, Alabama. He went to the University of the South and graduated, eventually. Bill enlisted in the Marine Reserves and got honorably discharged after six years. After his six months of active duty, he got married to Ruth King and finished his last few credits at Columbia in New York. While he was there, in the summer of 1964, he read Vermont was losing population, and he liked that. He and Ruth drove all over the state, delivering his resume to newspapers. Kendall Wild at The Rutland Herald hired him as a beginning reporter for $50 a week.
After three years at The Herald, he became the assistant managing editor. In 1973, he moved to Barre as the managing editor of the Herald’s sister paper, The Times-Argus and bought a sidehill farm in Adamant, Vermont. Over the years, he added to the original parcel of land, working on his objective, as he often stated it, “not to own all the land, just to own all the land that borders mine.”
In 1985, he went out on his own as a writer. He prepared the annual report for Green Mountain Power for 12 years and won a prize every year. Then he retired. He took his retirement money in a lump sum and learned about investing in the stock market. Along the way he built up his farm, learned to be a pretty good mechanic, and wrote a terrific novel called “Notes of a Self-Seeker.”
The family gave Bill a green burial at the top of his back pasture. There will be a memorial gathering in the summer at Bill’s farm. He is survived by his wife Ruth Porter and his four children and their families, Robby and Beth Ann Porter and their children, Ceres and Ford; Molly Porter and Chrissy Porter; and Louis Porter and Kim McKee and their daughters, Mae and Molly. Bill had three main focuses: his writing, his land, and his family. If you want to know more about Bill, just read his novel.
