In Memoriam
Nellie Hardy Porter
1906-2004
Nellie Hardy Porter passed away Saturday October 9th, 2004 at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland after a long, full life at the age of 98. In earlier years, Nana, as she was affectionately known by many, graduated from college and became an elementary school teacher in Kansas, helping supplement her family's income during the Great Depression. All of us will certainly retain loving memories of having our grammar corrected more than once by her.
She enjoyed playing scrabble, dominos and any card game that existed. She loved to tell stories from her century of abundant experiences and was an utmost master of the crossword puzzle. Even in her advanced years, her hearing was as sharp as her mind and more than one grandchild has sat in awe when being told to quit whispering by their elderly grandmother who heard them from across a noisy room. She was also an avid sports fan and reader, reading dozens of books weekly. In the last 10 years, she was a partner and resident of the Liberty Village Co-Housing Development, Mrs. Porter was the daughter of Gilbert and Eva Hardy and was born Nellie Elizabeth Hardy July 18th, 1906 in Kiowa, Kansas. Her legacy lives on through her three children, eight grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. Left to carry on in her stead are daughter Julie Fair and husband Mark of Pocatello, Idaho, grandchildren Kevin Jones, Brian Jones, Lee Ann Jones, Corey Porter, Chelsea Weiss and husband Peter, Callie Porter-Borden, Joellan Porter-Borden, Jamie Fair and his wife DeAnna, as well as many nieces, nephews and great grandchildren.
Denise Hope
1951-2004
Merlin Porter-Borden
1938-2004
Merlin has a tee shirt that he got at a national cohousing
conference a number of years ago, the front of which says “Cohousing”
and the back of which says: the longest and most expensive personal growth
therapy you’ll ever take! For Merlin, after 15 years of personal growth,
he was still going strong. And you can believe that he was seeing that the rest
of us were growing personally also. Merlin read about cohousing in an article
that John Beutler wrote for the Common Market magazine in 1989. Merlin told me
later that what interested him was that he wouldn’t have to drive his
children to their friends’ homes. He wanted his family to live in a
community where his children knew everyone, where they could play freely with
their friends, and where his neighbors worked together to make the community
work in other words, cohousing.
But Merlin wasn’t one to sit by and wait for someone else
to make this kind of community happen. From that beginning idea in December of
1989, Merlin threw himself heart and soul into making the dream of cohousing
become real. So with Tom Lofft and John Beutler, they started the daunting task
of building a group and looking for land. It is amazing that in this day of
large developers building cities out of large tracts of land, Merlin and his
team kept following their dream, spending their Sundays looking at different
parcels of land and having meeting after meeting after meeting. As an anonymous
writer wrote about Commitment: “It is making the time when there is none.
Coming through, time after time after time, year after year after year.
Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of
things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.” That was
Merlin. The owners of the first property wouldn’t sell find
another. The zoning for the Pride of Joy farm wasn’t right work
with the county to write cohousing into the zoning. When we were digging wells,
and the first five didn’t have enough water, try the sixth. When the sixth
well didn’t work design another way. And he never gave up. He was
never discouraged. He never complained. He never even seemed impatient. He just
kept encouraging us to keep going, to work with the county, to have our dream
community.
So all of us who live in Liberty Village now, have him to
thank. We wouldn’t be there except for him. We wouldn’t all have
homes we love and a community that is family, not just neighbors. Liberty
Village is just the best. But there is more. Merlin was one of the first people
in this area to build cohousing. We now have six cohousing communities in the
DC area, and he was the prime reason for three of them. He supported cohousing
on a national level, went to conferences, put forth ideas on the cohousing
listserve. He was always forwarding ideas to us read this about ground
source heating here’s some more to read about consensus. Years ago
when a woman with a disability wrote on the listserve, concerned that she
wouldn’t be able to help her community enough, he answered: “People
put into cohousing what they are willing, able and inspired to give. Of our 21
families, the range of effort expended ranges from huge to small, but we
accept, gratefully, every small bit of help. We give without expectations for
the level of effort of others. The desire to help is nurtured in an environment
of acceptance of whatever people are willing to contribute.” Merlin put in
huge amounts of time. He was a member of the three man development team and
reviewed the installation of all our infrastructure. Before we lived here, when
they planted the trees along the berm and they had to be watered, he actually
got people up to come out at 4:30 am to water them before it got too hot! He
designed and put in a drip system for watering our trees (maybe to keep from
having to get up at 4:30 all the time!). He designed our parking lot lights and
did a large part of the work He was on most of our major teams, came to
meetings, took minutes, and was an administrative partner. Recently he spent
hours reading about the problems with the sewage treatment system, talking to
county staff, and commissioners and then explaining to us what it all meant.
There are so many little things to thank Merlin for: the system of
moving our cars to clear the parking lots of snow (“first on the east
side, then move to the west side”) and our task list where we pin everyone
down “By when will you have that done?” In fact, one problem that we
have to face now is that we really don’t know all he did. We will just
have to see what breaks and then figure out how to fix it, once we find it. So
Merlin, even though you never wanted to be called “The Leader” in a
community based on consensus decision making, you led us to our community where
our neighbors are family. We take up the baton from you now, dear friend, and
move on to build 20 more homes and, most importantly, our common house. We will
not waver from your dream, as we fulfill our mission statement, the last lines
of which are: “To have a common house filled with the sights and sounds of
an active caring community, and to celebrate life!”
---Martie Weatherly