Louis Robert Porteous, Jr. ’46 died on January 22, 2005, in Falmouth, Maine.
Born in Norwich, CT, on March 21, 1923, he prepared for college at the Fessenden School in Newton, MA, and St. George’s School in Newport, RI, and became a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity at Bowdoin, which he attended from 1942 to 1943 before serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II and attaining the rank of quartermaster. He returned to the College in 1946, and after his graduation in 1948 as a member of the Class of 1946, he worked for a year with Sage- Allen Company in Hartford, CT. In 1949, he joined Porteous, Mitchell, and Braun, the department store in Portland that was founded by his grandfather and two partners in 1873. He became chairman of the board in 1966, a position he held until the company closed in 1991. He was president of the Portland YMCA and head of the Maine Publicity Bureau for several years. He was active in the March of Dimes and the Pine Tree Council of Boy Scouts and was chair of the United Way in Portland in 1966. He served two terms in the Maine Senate, was chair of the Maine Governor’s Council, and was a trustee of the Maine Medical Center, North Yarmouth Academy, and the Hyde School in Bath. He was also a trustee and board chair of the Maine College of Art, from which he received an honorary degree in 1981 and the Art Honors Award for Community Service and Philanthropy in 1998. In Bowdoin affairs, he was for many years, starting in 1950, 1946’s Class Agent in the Alumni Fund. He was also an Alumni Fund director from 1965 to 1970 and served as chair of the 1969-70 Fund, was a member of the Alumni Council from 1970 to 1974, and was a member of the Board of Overseers from 1982 to 1994. Surviving are his wife, Elizabeth Decker Porteous, whom he married in 1966; three sons, L. Robert Porteous III ’73 of South Freeport, Stuart Porteous of Seattle, WA, and David Porteous of Burlington, VT; two daughters, Elizabeth Wheeler Woodworth ’78 of West Bath and Martha P. Bolster ’83 of Portsmouth, NH; and nine grandchildren.