Professor Emeritus Porter Abbott always told his colleagues that he intended to move to northern Michigan when he retired. This would raise some eyebrows, as he was already working as a teacher in the fair climate of Santa Barbara, California, which is often seen as an ideal place for someone to settle down in their retirement years.
“People would ask me: ‘Here you are, living in paradise in Santa Barbara — why retire to Michigan? It’s cold up there,’” Abbott said. “Well, living in Santa Barbara was very nice, but it was like living in somebody else’s idea of paradise. Because I had the true idea of paradise – it was right here, up in Leelanau County.”
And that’s exactly what he did once he was ready to hang up his jacket — presumably a well-worn tweed professor’s jacket with elbow patches — and leave the English department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at 80 years old. Abbott and his wife Anita now live at their vacation home on the little peninsula, which overlooks Lake Michigan.
Although he was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up out of state, Abbott frequently visited a cottage on Lake Leelanau as a child. He says the family cottage comes from his grandmother’s side of the family and dates back to the early 1910s.
Abbott says his vision of Leelanau County as a paradise is rooted in childhood memories of these summer vacations. He says it’s only a slight exaggeration that “we took off our shoes at the beginning of the summer and put them back on at the end,” in reference to how much time they spent outside at places like Lake Leelanau and Gill’s Pier.
Abbott spent much time on the waters of Lakes Michigan and Leelanau with his extended family and lifelong friend, Bert Thomas. Although they pursued careers on opposite ends of the country, Abbott and Thomas kept in touch over the years and they now live about a mile away from each other.
“The smell of the air is absolutely distinctive. I cannot remember that wonderful ambiance anywhere else,” Abbott says.
Abbott has longstanding relationships with many of his neighbors, but his most important relationship is that with his wife of 60 years, Anita. Porter said that he met his wife when he was a graduate student at the University of Toronto around 1963-4, at a dance at one of the dormitories.
“At one of the dances… there were two really beautiful women,” Abbott remembers. “I walked over and started to chat with them. Then music started – so, this is an awkward situation. How do I choose one of these women to dance with? What I did was: I literally flipped a coin. Anita won the coin toss, and the rest is history.”
The two young grad students were soon married. Abbott said he was heeding his father’s advice to marry a woman smarter than he was.
A few years after that, Abbott started his career as an assistant professor of English in Santa Barbara. He taught many classes, but he says the most rewarding part of his time in academia was his original research. He started out studying modernism; authors who sought to break from tradition and create new forms of literature. Then he expanded his focus to narratives more broadly, writing several books on the subject.
During all this, Abbott and his wife continued to visit Leelanau County. During one of these visits in 1981, they saw a real estate listing for two acres of land by Lake Michigan. The two acquired the parcel after refinancing their home in Santa Barbara several times and developed it into a dream home that now occupies seven acres.
In retirement, Abbott continues to enjoy literature, and says he enjoys being able to read anything he wants without having any deadlines to worry about.
Until last year, Abbott was a member of the Leelanau Community Choir but left over concerns about his heart condition. Earlier this month, he volunteered as an election worker in Leelanau Township. He says that he was encouraged to see Democrats and Republicans working side-by-side during polling and canvassing and believes this suggests democracy will remain despite increased political polarization.
