Michael "Mike" Pell Porter

Mike was born in Indianapolis, IN on March 31, 1940 and passed away in Seattle, WA on November 23, 2024. Proud to have been described by a friend as “brilliant but eccentric,” Mike was a loving and supportive friend, father and grandfather who will be remembered for his exceptional intelligence, kindness, generosity, and sense of humor. His smile and laughter lit up the room and warmed our hearts.

He is survived by his daughter Genevieve Porter Eason, his son-in-law Robert Eason and three grandchildren, Savannah Eason, Amanda Eason, and James Porter Eason. His parents, Harold Troxel Porter and Mildred Maxine Pell Porter, and sister, Susan Elizabeth Alaynick, M.D., predeceased him.

He lived in New Orleans from 1948 to 1963, graduating from Fortier High School and Tulane University with a B.A. in 1961 and an LL.B. in 1963. Mike was a member of Sigma Nu social fraternity and helped reestablish its chapter at Tulane. Mike was in the National Honor Society in high school, Phi Beta Kappa as a college undergraduate and Phi Delta Phi in law school. He was also in Omicron Delta Kappa, an undergraduate college leadership society.

Mike served in the United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Corp in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, Saigon and Quy Nhon, Vietnam and Taipei, Taiwan. After being honorably discharged from the Army in 1966, he took two trips around the world from September 1966 to March 1968. Mike’s continuing frustration in life was his inability to become fluent in French despite lessons in high school and college and studying with a private tutor in Paris. He was an associate at the New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell from 1968 to 1971. In 1971 he moved to Honolulu and became an associate and later a partner at Cades Schutte Fleming & Wright. Mike was the associate editor of the Tulane Law Review in 1962-63 and later published several articles dealing with corporation law, including a book on Hawaii corporation law that was part of a national series. In 1995 he retired from practicing law and moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where he had a Fulbright Professorship to teach business law. In 1999 he moved to Cairo, Egypt where until 2002 he was the advisor to the Capital Markets Authority, the regulator of the Alexandria and Cairo stock exchanges, in a project of the United States Agency for International Development. After living in Africa, Mike moved to Clearwater, Florida, where he lived until early 2024. In 2006 he met Charles (Chuck) White, with whom he shared his life and love of travel, until Chuck’s death in 2023.

Mike was a member of the Episcopal Church and served on the Diocesan Council of Hawaii. He believed firmly that all persons are entitled to respect and equal opportunities. He recognized that as a white male growing up in the segregated South he had advantages denied to Black people and women. He worked to abolish their barriers, including a long comment at Tulane Law Review in 1963. In the summer of that year Mike clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, working on U. S. v. Louisiana, a voting rights case. His work in Ethiopia was to encourage development of businesses as a way of alleviating poverty.

Mike’s two abiding hobbies were traveling to visit friends and family and to experience life in other countries and cultures, and railroading and trains. He fondly remembered a trip to Colorado when he was ten, when he saw Rocky Mountain National Park and rode the Pike’s Peak cog railway in the first of several visits. In high school Mike was founder and president of the travel club which went to Washington, D.C. for the second inauguration of President Eisenhower. He went on to make many trips around the world, visiting all seven continents and over 160 countries.

Mike will be cremated at Butterworth Funeral Home in Seattle, WA, and his ashes scattered at sea in Honolulu. Memorial donations may be made to Save the Children.