Ruth King Porter
Ruth Porter was born in New York City and grew up in Alliance, Ohio, where her father was a doctor. She graduated from Laurel School in Cleveland, and from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. She did a year of secretarial school in Boston and then got married to Bill Porter. In 1964, they went to Vermont, to Clarendon Springs, near Rutland. After eight years they moved to a hill farm in Adamant, near Montpelier, where they have lived ever since.
Ruth raised four children and took care of the farm. (One of the children said that she and Bill learned everything they knew about farming from books, and most of those books were novels.) They had varying numbers of sheep, cows, pigs and chickens, and a big garden. Altogether, they raised most of their food.
Ruth spent her whole life reading and writing, but she began working on serious fiction during those hectic years. She has published three novels, as well as a book about her grandfather, Maxwell Perkins, one of America’s most widely respected editors. Bill and Ruth started the publishing company, Bar Nothing Books, in 2005.
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Bill Porter
08/02/1940—04/08/2022
Bill Porter was born in Russellville and grew up in Sheffield, Alabama. He went to the University of the South and graduated, eventually. It took a while because he couldn’t resist the lure of the road in April. After he did some time in the Marines to avoid the draft, he got married 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. He and Ruth drove all over the state, delivering his resumé to newspapers. The RutlandHerald hired him at $50 a week as a beginning reporter. After three years, 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. In 1985 he went out on his own as a writer. He revised what Dill said in To Kill A Mockingbird – “I can write. You got anything that needs writin, I can do it.” He prepared the annual report for Green Mountain Power for twelve years and won a prize for every one. Then he retired and took his retirement money to learn about investing in the stock market. Along the way, he built up his farm, learned to be a pretty good mechanic, wrote a novel, and started Bar Nothing Books. Bill had Alzheimers for five years before he died, but even so, he managed to do a lot of work around the farm. Here is a video taken a year before he died. https://www.wcax.com/2021/05/06/super-seniors-bill-and-ruth-porter/
Robby Porter
Robby Porter lives in Adamant, Vermont about a mile from where he grew up. He is married to Beth Ann Porter. They have two children, several dogs and live in an old welding shop he has never finished converting into a house. He has worked building furniture, storage sheds, installing solar panels, grooming ski trails and most recently, owning and managing two small hydroelectric facilities.