David Padget (’94 BBA)

Try It. You’ll Like It.

For the Porter Family, 2005 was a banner year in their Badger lives.

In April 2005, Ben (’63 BBA, ’66 JD) and Lee (’63 BSE EDU) Porter and 33 other members of the Porter family, ages 2 to 91, witnessed the dedication of the Porter Boathouse, the new home for men’s and women’s crew. Ben and Lee made a lead boathouse gift of more than $1 million in memory of Ben’s father, Ben, and his uncles Knight and Bob Porter, all of whom were Badgers.

Later in the year they donated funds to build a large stone fireplace in a new College of Agricultural and Life Sciences research and teaching facility at the Kemp Natural Resources Station near Woodruff and created a new Law School Dean’s Fund for the Law School.

“When you look at all the things the University of Wisconsin-Madison has done, in so many fields, on so many levels, there’s a thread of giving that runs through much of it,” Ben said. “Look at the generosity of the people who started the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), all of the foresight that took, all of the benefits that have flowed from that.

“Giving to something that will in turn grow to be for the better good, that’s something that’s always interested me,” he said. “I would challenge someone to find a better philanthropic cause than the work done at the University of Wisconsin.”

Ben and Lee both grew up in north suburban Glencoe, Illinois. He came to the University for freshman orientation – in the Stock Pavilion, surrounded by cows and sawdust, and knew he’d arrived in a different world. “It was a revelation for me,” he said. “It was not that familiar of an environment, to say the least.”

He had played football and wrestled in high school, and he knew neither of those sports was in the cards for him at the University. He heard about the crew program and found it intriguing.

“Although I was a little small at 6 feet tall and about 170 pounds, I was always attracted to water sports and was a hard worker,” he said. Ben found a place in the bow, or “seven seat,” in varsity and junior varsity boats in his sophomore through senior years. “I loved the team spirit and the sense of cooperation,” he said, and a lifelong love of rowing was born.

Lee started her college career at Miami University of Ohio before coming to the UW-Madison, in large part because Ben was here. “It was a profound change in the size of the student body and campus, the diversity of students, the huge number of graduate students,” she said. “It made a big impression on me.”

She finished her education, and she taught high school English and Spanish in Poynette.

After graduation, Ben earned entry into the Law School. “In my seven years in Madison, I went from an 18-year-old-freshman who was very naïve to a lawyer ready to take my place in the world,” he said. “It was quite a transformation.”

While Ben was in Law School, Lee worked for a year at the UW-Extension, which further sharpened their appreciation for the Wisconsin Idea.

“The whole notion of the Wisconsin Idea was unique,” Ben said. “You could see its effects in many places: the Short Courses for farmers, the UW-Extension’s service throughout the state, the technology transfer through WARF, that’s something you just don’t see in other places.”

After Law School, Ben went on active duty as an Army J.A.G. lawyer. He was assigned as the Post Judge Advocate for Presidio San Francisco and an appellate lawyer before the U.S. Court of Military Appeals in Washington, D.C. While in Washington he went to Georgetown University in the evenings and earned a master’s degree in tax. When Ben was released from active Army duty, the Porters settled in the Seattle area, close to water and mountains.

The Porters established the Law School Dean’s Fund to allow the dean maximum creativity to take advantage of unfunded opportunities to strengthen the Law School and challenge others to support the goals of the Dean’s Fund.


Lee said that she and Ben prefer to support those things close to their hearts, and University certainly qualifies. “It’s a pleasure to be able to do it, to contribute to something that’s added so greatly to our lives,” she said. “When people say, ‘It feels so good to give back,’ it might sound like a cliché. But when you have a chance to do it, you find out how true it is.”