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Persistence pays: Helen Porth achieves lifelong goal, becomes doctor of English

By Julie Liffrig

After 60 years of waiting and studying, Helen Porth's dream has come true. She is a doctor.

This Ambrose, N. D., native has been pursuing higher education almost continually since she graduated from high school in 1932. She completed a two-year teaching certificate from Minot State Teachers College in 1934, and earned a bachelor's degree in English and education from UND in 1941. By 1947, she had a master's degree from the University of Minnesota on her resume. And a few years later she began work on her doctorate at New York University (NYU).

Helen Porth while teaching in 1949.

“I probably started more than 30 years ago,” she said. “It took forever. It's been my aim since I graduated from high school.”

Last fall she defended her dissertation entitled, “An Examination of Indian and Pioneer Oral Narratives to Determine How They Parallel Or Diverge from the Written History of Western North Dakota.” For two hours, she faced the questions of the deans and professors at NYU. After the exam, they toasted her with champagne and called her “doctor.”

It was worth the years of effort. “I felt really happy,” she said. “I had some rough times in the process, and it feels really good to have completed it.”

Porth said her parents emphasized education, and made it an important part of her and her brother's childhood.

“We lived such a long way from a rural school when I was a child, but we were always there on time, sick or well. It was a big effort, father had to hitch up teams to take kids to school,” she said.

In addition to being a lifelong student, Porth has also been a teacher for nearly 52 years. She has taught at the elementary, high school and college levels, in several places including Crosby, N.D., Minot, N.D., Billings, Mont., Williston and Richmond, Calif. She taught English and humanities courses at UND-Williston for 25 years, and now that she's completed her Ph.D., she hopes to teach some graduate courses in English and literature through the UND Extension Service.

Porth lives on her childhood farm, her mother's homestead 56 miles north of Williston near the Montana and Canadian borders. Since her brother's death, she has overseen operation of the 800-acre family farm, which is primarily durum wheat.

The topic of her dissertation reflects Porth's interest and pride in North Dakota. The 216-page paper traces the history of western North Dakota Indians back to 1300 when ancestors of the Mandan Indians first established villages along the Missouri River.

In settling western North Dakota, pioneers often reverted to primitive ways in order to adapt. She gathered pioneer and Indian narratives through personal interviews, local history books, and magazines. Some of the narratives contradict each other in detail, and Porth's thesis deals with the diverse histories.

Porth's love for her corner of the world is obvious, and she quickly agrees that people who haven't seen western North Dakota are missing something beautiful.

“It's romantic,” she said. And, added, “It's just like the pictures you see of a man riding a horse through open fields.”