I'm grateful and honored that Roger Porter's daughter, Heather, asked me to say a few words about Roger today. After all, as a one-time teacher and later as a writer, Roger was a man who appreciated and loved the power and beauty of words.
But he also fully appreciated and loved many other things... such as family - his wife, Karen, and his children, Palma, Heather and Nick.
He loved and appreciated friends, many of whom are here today: Bruce Wilson, Bill Stedman, Jim Haney, John Hayes, Bill Lindsey, Joyce Sponheim... He had true friends in almost every community in this state. I'm willing to bet every one of them are going to miss his facetious annual Christmas letters, too.
He loved elegantly prepared and tasty food and wrote lovingly about it when he reported and discretely photographed the many tavern association charity dinners he attended over the years on behalf of the Montana Tavern Times.
Where he is now, you can bet there has been a sumptuous feast laid like the one he described in his April report filed from the Hi-Line Tavern Association dinner.
He first, in great detail, described the appetizers, dinner salad and cold-bar offerings. Then he got to the entrees: I quote, "Ginger-glazed baby carrots and green beans almondine, Orzo and almond rice pilaf, roasted garlic and rosemary artisan potatoes ("artisan" potatoes?), lemon pepper linguini in clam sauce, sauteed chicken with bow-tie pasta and peppers and onions, baked stuffed clams, lemon-peppered halibut, poached dill and buttered salmon, shrimp and broccoli pasta with garlic wine alfredo sauce, steamed king crab legs and sliced certified Angus prime rib."
That was obviously written by a man who knew and loved food!
He loved humor and unsheathed his quick and stinging wit readily. I think he especially loved self-deprecating humor where he, himself, was the foil of his jokes: a lost shoe, a wrecked car, a sunken boat, getting lost, a rightly peeved spouse - all the many minor mishaps that plagued his life and which he delighted in retelling.
He loved good books and good music, too, particularly Dixie Land jazz. But his tastes could be eclectic.
In fact, when I visited Roger at his condo about a week and a half before he passed, he and I talked at length about the great recording Johnny Cash made just a couple of years before he died, called "Unchained." The profound recording exemplifies Cash's signature themes on human suffering, justice and redemption, which I think Roger easily related to. One cut from that album, simply called "Hurt," certainly seems appropriate for all of us just now.
We agreed Cash had a premonition regarding his death, and so with his time remaining dedicated himself to cutting a monumental masterpiece that would be a fitting capstone to a remarkable and inestimably influential career.
Roger had a similar premonition, I believe. He concluded his last published column with this, and I quote: "I was told the other day that the Black Squirrel, symbol of prevailing bad luck, was again sighted in Cascade County so be on the lookout." Indeed, Roger, indeed.
Roger often played up, with a twinkle in his eye and a flourish of over-dramatization, an affected persona as a Walter Matthau-like curmudgeon and cheapskate - a characterization wherein he especially relished - and treated as a triumph - a free meal or a free beer.
But those of us who knew him well, understood he was at heart quite generous. He loved sending small gifts and many of us here were the regular recipients.
Thus, after our discussion of Johnny Cash, a CD arrived in my mail - Johnny Cash's "Unchained" album. I was listening to this very recording on the car stereo as we returned to Montana from North Dakota last Monday, just an hour or so before getting the news of Roger's leaving. How fitting... How bittersweet.
But talk about generous: Behind the scenes in 2006, Roger engineered an effort for me to be honored at the Montana Tavern Association Convention Banquet in Butte. The plaque I received that night was for, and I quote: "Unparalleled and enduring service to the licensed hospitality business in Montana." Wow! But that should have been etched on a plaque for Roger, not me.
However, his generosity and dedication were not unnoticed. I have heard through the business association grapevine that well before his death, a tribute to his service to the hospitality business was being prepared for presentation at the 2008 MTA convention to be conducted right here on Roger's home turf in Great Falls in September. Dang it, Roger, you should have stuck around long enough to receive the honor that was your due! I imagine the accolade will still be bestowed, but now you will have to observe the presentation from afar.
Roger loved to travel and took great pleasure in Montana's vast and wonderful spaces and scenery, even its vagarious - now there's a $10 word Roger would appreciate - even its vagarious weather.
His regular travels to tavern functions across the state enhanced his enjoyment of life greatly, I think, and provided the subject matter for many an interesting and entertaining Roger Porter article.
Mostly, he loved people, and especially the owners of our state's small hospitality businesses. He genuinely and generously wanted to help them, either through his work with the Montana Tavern Times or as an unpaid consultant.
I know he helped flatten the learning curve for many new owners by providing them with valuable information and business contacts. He knew everyone in the business who was worth knowing.
There were a few things Roger didn't like, but not many.
For one, he didn't like phonies and could spot them a mile away. He didn't like people who thought themselves superior. That's why, in complete satire and parody, he often referred to himself pompously as "Roger B. Porter," as though the use of the middle initial laughingly somehow elevated him.
He didn't like deadlines much, either, though he certainly understood their necessity. And he didn't like my crabbiness that resulted when a deadline was breached but, again, he understood it.
Heather told me that on the day he left us all behind, he was trying to figure out how he was going to get his articles done by deadline for our August edition of the Tavern Times, particularly a tribute he planned to write for his good friend Zollie Kelman who also passed away very recently.
Well, Roger doesn't have to worry about deadlines anymore; he met his last, and most important, one.
And he no longer has to sweat writing tributes to lost members of the business; that is now up to me.
Now I have to write a tribute to a very significant figure - a giant! - in the history of the Montana hospitality business - my friend and colleague, Roger Porter.
The Black Squirrel will harass him no more.
We will all miss him.
When my dad's father died, a friend of my dad's sent him these words. When a friend of my father's lost her father, Dad then shared these words with her. When I lost my father, she in turn sent these same words to me. I offer their comfort and beauty to you.
This is from author and poet Kahlil Gibran's fine book, "The Prophet" where he speaks of death:
"You would know the secret of death.
"But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
"The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
"If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
"For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
"In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
"And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring.
"Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity...
"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
"And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
"And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
"And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance."
Well, Roger was a little stove up at the end, but he's dancing now.
We love you, Roger
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, August, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.