Biography

Caroline A. Porter was a freelance writer from 1989 to 2008 as part of Caroline Porter Ideas, a sole proprietorship for marketing, public relations and freelance writing.

Prior to that, in 1971, she was the author and director of a report for the Winnebago/Rockford City-County Planning Commission and Forward Rockford, Inc., a community action organization in Rockford, Illinois, with a membership of about 800. The report was financed in part through an urban planning grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The report was entitled,  “Study of Free Choice of Housing.”

Under the previous name of Caroline Goltermann, she had assistance and direction from an advisory board. Sixty individuals and several groups were interviewed for the study. The report was 70 pages and the conclusions and recommendations were widely publicized.

In 1989, Mrs. Porter established her sole proprietorship of Caroline Porter Ideas. She wrote 197 columns for the weekly newspaper, The Zephyr, published in Galesburg, Illinois, from 1999 to 2008, as well as other news articles beginning in 1989.

She was also writing monthly columns called “As Life Gets Funnier” for Senior Life and Leisure magazine, also published in Galesburg, taking a humorous and offbeat look at getting older. In 1996 she self-published an illustrated book under the same name. She printed and sold 1000 copies in Galesburg and other communities nearby and even at an appearance in Minnesota. The book won first place from the National Federation of Press Women.

Mrs. Porter won fifteen awards for her writing from the Illinois Women’s Press Association, including ten first place awards. She won two first place awards from the National Federation of Press Women. In 2002 she was named “Communicator of Achievement” by the IWPA and nominated for the national award. 

Mrs. Porter was a reporter, feature writer and photographer for the Quad-City Times and Rock Island Argus from 1989 to 1997 and wrote many articles and features for her clients, including school District 205 and Carl Sandburg Community College.

She was born and raised in Kewanee, Illinois and graduated from Knox College in Galesburg in 1958, with a major in English Literature. A political activist all her adult life, she acquired a major in Political Science at Knox College in 1973, and at the age of 71, earned a Master of Arts Degree at in Political Science in 2007 at Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL.  She taught 155 students in three semesters at Monmouth College, Illinois from 2008 to 2010.

Mrs. Porter now lives in Springfield, IL, where she is near her three children, two grown grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Another granddaughter lives in the Commonwealth of Virginia.