Judith Carol Porter

Judith Carol Porter, age 82, passed away peacefully on January 26, 2023. “Judee” was born on August 1, 1940, in Kansas City, Missouri to Ted and Suzy Melson. She was the eldest of three children, growing up with a brother and sister, and eventually became a wife, mother of four, aunt, grandmother of seven, and a mother-like figure to countless others in her lifelong orbit.

Like her high school sweetheart and husband of 63 years, Darrell Coyne Porter, she graduated from Raytown High School where she was voted Homecoming Queen and, with Darrell, helped to organize and get off the ground the first Teen Town at Raytown. And then, the rest of her life began.

Judee was a talented woman, a fiercely intelligent and independent woman, and yet with an overwhelming “welcoming” personality that drew all kinds of people towards her like a magnetic force. While her centrality of purpose was always as a wife and mother of four siblings, each of which were 3-4 years apart, she wore many hats at one time or another. She was a defensive backfield coach on her sons’ youth football teams – and a pretty good one at that. She worked in various capacities in the NKC school district. She was one heck of a bowler in the women’s league at Gladstone Bowl.

She spent the first 25 years of her marriage holding down the family fort at home and away, giving her young husband the time and focus he needed to open and operate his own business, Darrell’s Café and Truckers Motel. Once that business was sold, she spent the next 20+ years as co-owner and co-operator with her husband of the new family business, Cheep Antiques, where they worked every day with their sons Jeff and Cregg in Kansas City’s River Market. Whatever the challenge at hand, chances were Judee could and would handle it.

But ultimately, she was the Center of the Universe of the Porter Family – the owner, operator, and star of the show. She was technically the mother of 4 but really the mother of a much larger extended family that included not only grandkids and in-laws but countless other young people who looked to her as a sort of surrogate mother, their favorite “friends' mom”, a mother-like figure whenever that young person needed a shoulder to cry on or an ear to talk to. Her well of empathy was bottomless.

Judee is preceded in death by her parents, Theodore and Suzy Melson, and her brother Teddy Melson. Judee is survived her husband Darrell Coyne Porter, her children Darrek, Jeffery, Christy, and Cregg, and also by her grandkids Samantha, Sydnee, George, Colin, Cade, Natalie, and Cameron; and her sister Karen Sue Melson Sutton.

Family will have a visitation on Monday, February 13 from 6 to 8pm at White Chapel Funeral Home, 6600 NE Antioch Rd., Gladstone, MO 64119.