David William Porter

December 2, 1946 - December 6, 2020

David William Porter of Skiatook passed away on Sunday, December 6, 2020 at St. John's Medical Center in Tulsa due to complications from a stroke. David's cremation is being directed by Peters-Stumpff Funeral & Cremation in Skiatook with a service to be planned for some time in 2021.David William Porter was born on December 2, 1946 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and adopted shortly thereafter by Marcus Lockwood Porter and Ruth Jane Elliott Porter. David spent his younger years in Okmulgee, where Marcus worked as Assistant Superintendent at the Phillips Petroleum Company's Okmulgee Refinery. As Marcus's responsibilities with Phillips changed, the family moved to Woods Cross, Utah, and then finally to Bartlesville, where David graduated from high school in 1965.David always loved to build things and spent much of his spare time as a teenager working on his hot rod Model A. After high school, David moved to Los Angeles to study Aerospace Engineering at the Northrop Institute for Technology. While there, he also received hands-on training at NASA's Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. David often bragged about working alongside Neil Armstrong - who was then an experimental test pilot and had yet to walk on the moon - and drinking at the local watering hole with Armstrong and the other test pilots after working hours.After a couple of years in southern California, David moved back east, where he enrolled at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, and married his first wife, Patti Holdredge Porter. David and Patti had a daughter, Christa. David eventually left college to work as a salesman for Liquid Carbonic Corporation, ultimately leading to a Sales Manager job at Liquid Carbonic's corporate headquarters in Chicago.Then, in 1976, David's mother unexpectedly died. Shortly thereafter, David left Chicago and bought a 30-acre property near Skiatook Lake, which allowed him to be closer to his father. The two of them would spend many weekends together at the property, clearing brush, planting fruit trees, and preparing the sites where a home and workshop would eventually be built.After his return to Oklahoma, David took a job as International Sales Manager with BS&B Safety Systems, a job which involved frequent travel to East Asia - especially to Japan and China. During this time, David married his second wife, Mary Porter Dennehy, and the two had a daughter, Sarah. Several years later, David married a third wife, Linda Games Lakey, and the two had a son, Max.Always a tinkerer and entrepreneur, David eventually left BS&B to found and run his own engraving products company, Diemasters, which he ran from home up until his hospitalization last month - although he went into semi-retirement around 10 years ago. In 2002, David completed his Bachelor's degree in Integrated Studies at Emporia State University. In 2010, David married his wife, Tamara Sarra-Porter, and the two of them adopted a daughter, Presley, in 2017.David was known to his friends and family as a great teller of stories and jokes, a brilliant mind, and an opinionated free-thinker (as well as a frequent contributor to the Tulsa World's Letters To The Editor section).David was preceded in death by his parents, Marcus Porter, and Ruth Porter. David is survived by his wife, Tamara Sarra-Porter; his daughter, Christa Porter Harris; his daughter, Sarah Porter Shepherd and her husband, Matt Shepherd; his son, Max Porter and his wife, Elizabeth de Mahy; his stepdaughter, Junita Watkins; his stepson, Matthew Sarra; his adopted daughter, Presley Sarra; his sister, Priscilla Snow; his grandchildren, Colt Shepherd, Mary Shepherd, Aric Soule, Joshua Harris, and Ethan Harris; and his step-grandchildren, Dylan Harper, Breanna Storey, Andrew Storey, McKenzie Storey, and Ethan Kent.If you would like to be notified of future plans for David's memorial, you can email his son, Max, at [email protected]