Ellsworth C. Porter
P.O.Box 511
Wheelersburg, Ohio
45694

Phone: 740-574-6394
Email: EZ(at)PorterClan.US

Born January 9, 1927
at home, in his parents' bed
near the village of Blane,
rural Elliott County, KY

Father: Theodore R. Porter
Mother: Rebecca Skaggs Porter

My dad, Ellsworth Porter is the middle child of three. His parents lived / worked as sharecroppers on hardscrabble land in rural Kentucky. During the depression years Young Ellsworth walked two miles to school and worked helping his parents raise corn and sharecrop the family plot after school. He grew up with a strong sense of community and extended family. In (1940?) the small two-room dwelling burned to the ground (a faulty flue) and the family moved across the Ohio River to Wheelersburg, where they gained employment working on a truck farm, raising grain and vegetables. They worked hard and prospered, buying a small house on Dogwood Ridge, near Bihl's farm, where they all worked. Ellsworth attended WHS and graduated a year early in 1945. He joined the army and was soon shipped to occupied Belgium, where he served as an MP and a driver. He was also the company's best sharpshooter, and hunted and killed 17 elk from a herd in the Black Forest to help feed his company during the winter of 1945/46.

When dad was discharged he returned to Wheelersburg, Ohio where he met and married JoAnn Mahan Porter in the fall of 1948. They are still married today - over 58 years. JoAnn's steady love is the basis for his success.

Dad worked as a bus driver in Huntington, W. VA. for a year or so after getting married. There their first child (of eight) was born in September of 1949. The family moved to Cincinnati in 1950 and lived there while E.C. attended college for two years on the GI Bill. In 1952 the young family moved back to Wheelersburg, in southern Ohio, where my father worked as a union carpenter, first on construction of a dam across the Ohio, and later at other union projects in the area, including the Piketon Uranium Enrichment Facility. On February 12, 1962, Ellsworth was hired by the local Detroit Steel company as a foreman, and in 1964, made pit foreman in the open hearth where the raw ore and additives are melted in a huge caldron over a coke (charcoal) fire, and the molten steel is poured out into ingots. One of his crew later told me how some of the men on dad's crew were fond of sleeping on the night shift and how dad would do not only his job, but also the jobs of 2 to 3 others almost routinely. He also plows, plants, and tends about an acre-sized vegetable garden for his extended family and friends, as he has his whole adult life.

E.C. has worked all his life, as a union carpenter, as a farmer, a soldier, a bus driver, a carperter, a custom home builder, and as a steel mill foreman. Over the years he has been active in local churches in the community, currently worshipping at Christ Community Church of Portsmouth, Ohio.

Ellsworth's oldest son, Buck Henry Huckelberry, is a web designer, and he is currently working on an online website with the intention of finding and providing the best available online insurance quote system designed for rural and small town residents. There's also another site that Buck is developing at A.com