William Porterfield
William Wendell (Bill) Porterfield, age 89, died peacefully on December 14, 2025. Bill was born on August 24, 1936, to Donald and Adelyn Porterfield in Winchester, Virginia. He was a precocious child who learned to read before he even started kindergarten. When Bill was in third grade, the family moved to Goldsboro North Carolina, just down the street from his future wife, Dorothy Dail; however, he didn’t get the courage to ask her out until they were both seniors at Goldsboro High School (class of ’53). He studied chemistry at the University of North Carolina, earning pocket money hand-painting custom signs in the windows of businesses on Franklin Street.
After graduating from UNC in June 1957, he spent a summer interning in Rochester, NY before marrying Dorothy on his 21st birthday in August 1957. For their honeymoon, they drove to Pasadena, California, where Bill began his studies at CalTech while Dorothy worked as a medical technologist. After receiving his M.S. in Chemistry there, they returned to Chapel Hill to start their family and continue his graduate studies at UNC. Bill earned his Ph.D. in 1962 with a thesis titled Studies of Metal Oxide-Metal Chloride-Chlorocarbon Chemical Systems. Following graduation Bill spent two years as a Senior Research Chemist at Allegany Ballistics Laboratory developing solid-propellant rocket fuel -- he truly was a rocket scientist.
At the urging of his wife, Dorothy to “please give up working with explosives”, he joined the Hampden-Sydney College faculty in February 1964 where he taught Chemistry and Rhetoric for 48 years. They lived on campus, raising their sons, Allan and Douglas, and becoming active members of the college community and College Church. Bill was instrumental in shaping and modernizing the college chemistry program, emphasizing undergraduate research and preparing students for graduate school. As an inorganic chemist, Bill never lost his love for explosions; this, combined with a lifelong interest in history and his sense of patriotism, naturally evolved into some memorable Fourth of July fireworks celebrations. As a longtime member of the Farmville Planning Commission, he was able to obtain permits to legally purchase some very impressive fireworks which were set off in the side yard following a community picnic and group reading of the Declaration of Independence.
Bill and Dorothy loved to travel and took many family trips to National Parks across the United States, which Bill meticulously recorded in slides and photographs. Once their sons left home, they extended their travels to Europe, spending a sabbatical in Durham, England and visiting ancestral sites in Scotland. Later they enjoyed visits to Greece, and a river cruise through Hungary, Austria, and Germany. But their favorite vacation spot was their lake house on Smith Mountain Lake where they entertained their children and grandchildren with tubing and water skiing.
Bill was the author of Concepts of Chemistry, a general chemistry text, and the accompanying lab manual Introduction to the Techniques of Chemistry, as well as Inorganic Chemistry: A Unified Approach. He was also a passionate enthusiast of Hampden-Sydney history and given the length of his teaching career and his life on campus, he was an eyewitness to nearly one-fourth of the College’s history. He was the author of Chemistry at Hampden-Sydney, which provides a detailed history of chemistry and science instruction at the College from its founding until his retirement as the Venable Professor Emeritus of Chemistry in 2012. In an earlier volume, Things That Might Have Happened at Hampden-Sydney, Bill exercised his skills as a raconteur re-telling accumulated Hampden-Sydney lore. In recent years Bill researched and created a series of lectures, Hampden-Sydney Over its First Two Centuries, as part of the College’s 250thanniversary commemoration.
Bill was preceded in death by Dorothy, his wife of 57 years. He leaves behind his sons Allan (wife Carrie and daughters Elizabeth Bryan and Suzanne Porterfield) and Doug (wife Laurel and sons Tim, Grant, and Andrew) and three great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at Hampden-Sydney College Church on March 14, 2026 at 11:00am.
In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Hampden-Sydney Chemistry Department.