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Born in 1944 and raised on a 500-acre farm near Rushville, Indiana, Stephen Porter learned early what it meant to work hard and live close to the land. The first in his family to attend college, he earned a B.S. in Business Administration from Indiana University before entering the Army as a second lieutenant in January 1968. Serving in the Transportation Corps, he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado Springs, and later spent a year in Nha Trang, Vietnam. He credits the Army with developing his self-reliance.
Upon discharge in 1971 he stayed in Colorado, working as a waiter at a high-end resort for a year before returning to Indiana, where he eventually took up farming on his own account, until 1975 when he felt a pull toward something deeper. Sponsored by a local church, he earned a Master of Divinity in Chicago (1975–79), then served a year as an assistant pastor in Iowa. It didn't click — but the big questions it raised never left him.
With no clear next step, he set out in the summer of 1981 to walk the Appalachian Trail — 11 weeks and roughly 425 miles from the northern end down into Connecticut, using the time and solitude to think. He stopped in Westport, picking up work at the well-regarded Chez Pierre — a useful connection he would return to — before heading back to Colorado to train and work with Outward Bound's mountaineering programs (1984–85). Back in Westport by 1986, he rejoined Chez Pierre and later earned licensure as a massage therapist through the CT Center for Massage Therapy (1988–90). His search for how best to be useful to others eventually led him to a Master of Social Work from Fordham (1990–93), and he spent the better part of a decade doing social work in the Bronx.
Since 2001, he has driven a school bus for Weston — a job he finds suits him — and devoted his considerable free time to the life of the mind. He reads voraciously: history, literature, social science. He had just finished War and Peace the week we sat down to talk.
Stephen joins the Y's Men looking for good conversation and new connections — which, come to think of it, has always been his natural habitat.
(Interview and Bio by Clarence Hayes)
Thank You:
We thank these Y’s Men who have referred new members in the current fiscal year:
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