Born in Little Rock and a graduate of Hall High School — where he served as the first student body president — Porter Briggs absorbed the South's rhythms before heading to Vanderbilt University. He soon transferred to the University of Arkansas, becoming a campus leader who booked blues legend Josh White and confronted the era's entrenched racial attitudes. Those Civil Rights years shaped his enduring commitment to civic service.
After graduation, Porter was commissioned as a U.S. Army infantry officer and stationed in Cold War Germany. He commanded rifle and tank platoons under the famed V Corps and was selected to brief General Creighton Abrams, an encounter he still counts among the highlights of his military career.
Returning to Arkansas in the 1960s, he was recruited by Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, in the wake of the Central High School crisis, to lead Arkansas Careers — a statewide initiative created to retain homegrown talent. Over the next decade, he championed Arkansas's cultural and economic future by supporting rural hospitals, agricultural enterprises, and historic preservation. His founding of the award-winning American Preservation magazine, later acquired by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, reflected his passion for protecting the South's heritage.
Porter's work stretched far beyond Arkansas. He co-led an anti-nuclear campaign in California with actor Paul Newman, staged John Denver's historic concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg at the height of the Cold War, and spent six years on Wall Street. Even as his public achievements accumulated, his private life was marked by upheaval, including personal loss, the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert, and being two blocks from the White House on September 11, 2001.
Entrepreneurship eventually brought him back home. Porter founded A Briggs Passport & Visa Expeditors in 1996, selling the company to CIBT in 2014. The following year he launched Travelier, a “discovery engine” cataloging more than 90,000 U.S. destinations to help travelers uncover iconic and overlooked places, along with The Voice of the South, an archive of original Southern stories. He later sold Travelier to an Israeli firm.
Service remains central to his life. For sixteen years, Porter quietly tended the boxwood shrubs at the Lincoln Memorial as an act of civic devotion, culminating in being named Volunteer of the Year by the National Park Service. He and his wife, oncologist Dr. Diane Wilder, have chaired CARTI's Festival of Trees to expand access to cancer care across Arkansas. Porter has also been the key fundraiser for the Delta Children's Trust, which supports young people in Clarendon and Marianna as they work toward stable futures.
In support of fellow veterans, Porter is donating a portion of his memoir's proceeds to the proposed Fisher House in Little Rock, which will provide free lodging for military families receiving medical care. His book offers more than a chronicle of public milestones; it reveals a candid portrait of a man shaped by Southern roots, wartime service, and personal redemption.
Among the memoir's most poignant threads is his forty-nine-year search for the son he relinquished at birth in Zürich, Switzerland. That journey culminated in reconciliation and a deeper understanding of grace that now informs his writing and relationships.
Today, Porter lives in Little Rock with Dr. Wilder. From the battlefields of Europe to corporate boardrooms, public agencies, and the gardens of the Lincoln Memorial, his life reflects a sustained commitment to service. South, Towards Home stands as both personal odyssey and an invitation for readers to see the South — and themselves — anew.