Shirley grew up in the small Oregon towns of Klamath Falls and Ashland OR, where she graduated from high school in 1949. Immediately after graduation she started working toward her cosmetology license and was employed at her sister’s beauty shop in the Ashland Hotel.
 
Both of her parents attended college, but Shirley knew nothing about sorority rush and pledging, as they hadn’t participated in the Greek system. Her high school classmate, good friend, and neighbor, also named Shirlee (spelled differently) went to Oregon State University in Corvallis right after high school. She was already a Pi Phi when Shirley arrived in fall of 1950.  Shirlee talked Shirley into going through rush as a “good way to meet really neat people.”
 
Shirley describes a “big” pledge class of thirty young women who remained close from then until now. The women promised they would hold a reunion every five years, and they accomplished just that over the past seventy-some years. The reunions might have been at someone’s home, a hotel, or a big adventure. When she was 80, they took a Columbia River Cruise.  Shirley attended most reunions until 2018, noting that there “are not many of us left.”
 
The chapter house in Corvallis was a big old French Provincial with a large chimney and is on the National Historic Register. A new house was built in late 1970s. Though the girls were required to live in a dorm as freshman, all members lived in the house for their next three years. Shirley was one of a few of her Pi Phi sisters who worked off campus during the school years. Using her beautician skills, she worked Saturdays at the beauty parlor of the Benson Hotel in downtown Corvallis.  
 
The Pi Phi House was not on “fraternity row,” rather a significant walk from main campus. The Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) chapter house was across the street. It seems there were many friendly pranks, courtesy of the SAEs. Shirley happily related a few. "The Pi Phi house had a sleeping porch. One time the SAE brothers procured live turkeys from the poultry barn and put them on the fire escape where they then invaded the sleeping porch. The girls woke up to “gobble gobbles.” The house had a reinforcement beam for the chimney which the SAEs thought was a great place to hang a toilet. When the Pi Phi mothers were there for the weekend, they slept on the porch and the sisters slept on the floor in the living room. The SAE house boys had a key to the house, so they let themselves in and turned their big dog loose to sniff and lick and slobber on the sleeping sisters." And that was then!
 
Shirley’s passion was sewing – she started as a child on a treadle machine – and she graduated from Oregon State in 1953 with a BS degree from the College of Home Economics/Clothing. 
 
As a land-grant college, Oregon State participates in “cooperative extension” programs providing education to the state’s rural communities in home economics and general agriculture. Shirley’s first job after graduation was as an Oregon State faculty member/Home Economics Agent through the cooperative extension program. She taught 4H kids and adult women in Lane County Oregon. She served as a County Agent there for two years. 
 
Shirley was fixed up with a Fiji, Wallace Portouw and they were married October 15, 1955, and the couple relocated to New Jersey where Wally was working. Looking for new friends, Shirley joined the local Pi Phi Alum Club.
 
While in New Jersey, Shirley taught 5th grade students and worked part time in fabric shops, primarily fixing zippers. The couple’s three sons were born in Camden in 1958, 1959 and 1961. “Wasn’t that a lot to handle…three boys born in three years?” I asked. Shirley told me that “if she was gonna do diapers, then get it over with and have a family.” She has eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her son Steven is a captain in the US Navy and an emergency room physician at the Balboa Naval Hospital San Diego. Larry lives in Sierra Vista and is a retired colonel in the US  Army. Bill lives in South Carolina and has had “19 different kinds of jobs,” including teaching people to ride motorcycles, raising hens/eggs for test labs, and training the Denver meter maids.
 
The family moved to Tucson for the first time in 1962. While there, Shirley received her master’s degree in Home Economics/Textiles at the University of Arizona and cared for her young family. She joined the Tucson Alumnae Club for the first time. From Tucson the couple moved back to New Jersey where Shirley worked at the Singer Sewing Store and taught the staff how to work the old machines. After two years, they decided to move back west.  
 
Shirley found employment as a County Extension Agent for Routt County in Steamboat Springs, CO. She had an office in the County Court House with the Agriculture Agent director and a 4H Agent. There wasn’t a Pi Phi alum club in Steamboat, so Shirley was active in the local and state AAUW while there. She taught home economics for twenty-one years and wrote a bulletin for the Colorado State University Extension Service about applied research on “sour dough at high altitude.” She retired there in July 31, 1991.  
 
After retirement Shirley and Wally moved to Colorado Springs, CO where she was alum club president for two years. She was honored at the 1997 Dallas convention as the Psi Province winner of the Emma Harper Turner Award.
 
Shirley’s husband passed away in 1998 and in 2001, she moved to San Diego to be a “nanny granny” and help her son raise his three young children. She was active in the local alumnae club while there. After her son remarried, she “escaped” to Sierra Vista in 2008.
 
There wasn’t a Pi Phi alum club in Sierra Vista so Shirley joined the Tucson Club again in 2009 and drove and hour or so to meetings.  When her Sierra Vista friend, Diane Pride Derr (AZ Alpha ’13 alum initiate) became a Pi Phi, they traveled to Tucson together with another Pi Phi alum, Corinne Fox (AZ Alpha ‘57, deceased). These three traveled to Tucson for philanthropic events and Founders’ Day. For the past several years Diane has continued to drive Shirley to Tucson.
 
Shirley speaks fondly of her working years and feels fortunate to have spent most of her life doing what she learned in college. She taught “everything from upholstery to boning fish,” loved teaching and always learned something from her students.  
 
Her advice to those now graduating: “When you move to a new town the first thing to do is see if there are any Pi Phis there.”  She certainly followed her own advice, belonged to five alum clubs (Tucson twice), and attended five different conventions representing an alum club.  
 
When asked how her Pi Phi experience contributed to her success, she offered these thoughts, “I learned to live with people and get along even when we didn’t agree. I met people from different places and backgrounds which broadened my horizons. I learned how to set goals and evaluate where I was headed. I made lifelong friends and had lots of fun.”
            
I invited Shirley to tell us something about herself that we would be surprised to know.  This is the story she told. “I was born in 1931. When I was about six months old my parents, older sister, and I moved to the very small town of Bonanza, OR. Out in the country my parents built a two-bedroom house with no electricity, no bathroom, and a water pump in the kitchen. We had coal oil lamps. My grandparents lived nearby and had a crank phone (per Shirley: high tech!). We had a radio but couldn’t play it without electricity. My mother liked to listen to music on Sunday evening, so my father took the battery out of the car and brought it in to run the radio. We lived behind “rattlesnake hill” (named as such because there were lots of rattlesnakes on the road). Mother raised turkeys, the coyotes watched them from the hill and Mother watched for the coyotes. If they came for the turkeys, she’d shoot at them with her shotgun, and they’d scatter. Mother was a good carpenter. She said: “If I can build a dress, I can certainly build a house.” We moved to Klamath Falls when I was six. My sister had been in 4H in Bonanza, she was a real country girl. I always wanted that too but was too young. When we moved to Klamath Falls, I was finally old enough to be in 4H, but you couldn’t be in 4H if you lived in town. I was never in 4H.”   
 
A big thank you and lots of Pi Phi love to Shirley for sharing her beautiful story with us. Her goal is to be honored as a diamond arrow at Founders’ Day 2026 with 75 years as a Pi Phi. We look forward  to sharing that moment with you Shirley!