A love story in life -- and in death

Jim and Pat Porter, who were married almost 48 years, died within hours of each other.

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 1, 2001

TAMPA -- Love carried Jim and Pat Porter through 48 years of marriage. It kept them together, even in death.

Pat Porter, 65, died of cancer on Saturday. Hours later, her 67-year-old husband's heart stopped beating. He had just told his children he wanted to join her. They believe he died of a broken heart.

"Theirs was a true love story," one of their sons, Randy Porter, said Tuesday. "Neither of them were perfect people. But the one perfect thing they had was each other."

The high school sweethearts long ago had instructed their four children to have them cremated. No frills. No service. No eulogies. Just family sitting around, reminiscing about their favorite memories, the couple's urns nearby. And, as in life, the couple wanted to be next to each other.

Their love story began in the hills of West Virginia.

Patricia Mae Parsley was the daughter of a schoolteacher and a homemaker. She was the youngest of 10 children living in rural Chattaroy, W.Va. Miles away, on a farm in Dingess, lived a coal miner's son, James Leonard Porter, the oldest of six children.

They met at Lenore High School, situated between their homes. He was a foot taller and a basketball player, gregarious and fun. She was a grade below him and a majorette, shy and sweet.

"It was a whirlwind, love-at-first-sight romance," said Greg Porter, their oldest son. "Once they met, that was it."

They started going steady but were forbidden to date. So he would hitchhike on the back of passing trucks and travel 23 miles through corn and vegetable fields to her house. They would giggle and talk on the couch, under her father's watchful gaze.

Once, they sat on her piano bench and posed for pictures. He wore slacks and a crisp white shirt and tie; she, a striped dress. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pecked her on her left cheek as she beamed.

On Aug. 23, 1953, a few months after she graduated from high school, they married in a small church. She wore a homemade wedding dress. Her veil reached to her fingertips. Someone pinned a carnation to the lapel of his suit.

He got a job at a supermarket bagging groceries and stocking the shelves -- the only son in his family not to mine coal. She stayed home. A year later, she gave birth to a baby, who was stillborn. They named him David.

The next year, they had another son, Greg. He was followed by Randy, then Beth, then Joe.

Jim Porter soon rose through the ranks in retail, managing store after store. His occupation took the family to different parts of the country and in 1979, they settled in Tampa.

He got a job managing an Amoco station in Brandon. In 15 years, he never missed a day of work. They never took trips or exchanged gifts at Christmas, their birthdays or anniversaries. Instead, they spent their money on their children and eight grandchildren.

"They were just very simple," Randy Porter said. "Material things were never important to them. Everything they had, they gave to us."

When Randy Porter looked through his father's finances recently, he was shocked that his life's earnings were so minimal. His mother worked part-time jobs once the children were grown, even operating the register at the Amoco station. They never made much.

"I'm amazed that they raised four kids," he said. "We never wanted for anything. We never thought that we were poor."

The children all lived near the couple's apartment in a retirement community in Brandon. Hardly a day went by that Beth Stewart didn't see her parents. They watched her two children almost every day, even when her father battled prostate cancer and had several strokes.

And every holiday, Pat Porter cooked enough food "to feed an army."

Even after surgery last year to remove a benign brain tumor, she still insisted on cooking Christmas dinner. The family thought she had recovered. But in April, she was given a diagnosis of lymphoma. In May, her husband took off work to care for her. He bathed her, clothed her and smoothed the few wisps of hair she had left. He pureed her food so she could eat. He read newspaper articles to her when cancer blurred her sight.

And they fell asleep each night to songs from Anne Murray's What a Wonderful World CD, a gift from their son Joe.

When her condition worsened on July 18, they took her to the hospital. Jim Porter slept on a chair next to his wife's bed. He caressed her arms and legs. He whispered to her and cried. And he played their special CD each night.

"He just hovered over her," Randy Porter said. "He wouldn't leave her side."

When his sons took him home to shower, he would wash himself as fast as he could and insist they take him back to the hospital immediately. He was never away from her for more than an hour.

About 11 a.m. Saturday, more than a week after she went to the hospital, Pat Porter took her last breath. Her husband and children were with her.

Just as she had wished, they returned to the apartment the Porters had shared and told their favorite family stories, the Anne Murray CD playing in the background.

Jim Porter told his children: "I just wish I could go with your mother."

He went into the bedroom to rest. The children eventually left.

A few hours later, Randy Porter returned to spend the night. He found his father dead of a heart attack.

"We just thought he had gone to sleep," their daughter Stewart said. "I think he just held on to take care of her."

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