Early Life
Porter was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado and spent his childhood summers as a cowboy on a Colorado ranch. He quit high school to join the Navy during WWII and was expelled from the Navy when they learned he was only sixteen. Porter later put himself through college, finishing undergraduate work in three years and working nights as a crew dispatcher on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. According to a 2000 CNN interview, Porter attributes his self-confidence to his work as a young cowboy:
| “ | Hard, hard work. I used to get up at four o'clock in the morning and it was my job to go out and get the horses in and so forth and come in and eat and sit on a horse all day long. And when we weren't doing that, we were, you know, stacking hay or mowing the oats or, you know, whatever. When you're in the homesteading frame of mind you just do things because they're right and you have that self-confidence that just won't quit. | ” |
As a student at Adams State College, Porter and other students would take turns visiting and reading aloud to the aged and infirmed former governor of Colorado, Billy Adams.
Read more about this topic: William A. Porter
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)