A Continuing Gift

Through the years that have followed, the Porter family has taken an active interest in the institution and has made frequent and substantial donations to its capital improvement. The interest of the father was transmitted to the son, Will Porter. He, after the passing of his father and mother, with the recurring regularity of Christmas, annually remembered the institution his father and sister founded. On June 23, 1958, Will Porter passed away. His estate was valued at more than $13,000,000, and his will contained the following clause:SHM 417.3

Item IV—B. “I give and bequeath to the Porter Sanitarium and Hospital, a Colorado corporation, situate at Denver, Colorado, one of said shares, or one sixth of my residuary estate, said amount to be held by said Porter Sanitarium and Hospital in its building fund and to be used only for the construction of permanent betterments and improvements to said institution.”SHM 417.4

Thus the one-dollar tip declined and the forty-five-cent overpayment returned, plus the many other influences which played upon the lives of these people, were multiplied even more than the loaves and fishes of old. The Porter Memorial Hospital stands today not alone a monument to the generosity of the Porter family, but also as a tribute to the unidentified treatment hand, the nurse who fed the old man, and all of the others who were used by God to tell the story of His love through deeds of daily exemplary living.SHM 418.1