O. Henry O. Henry William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American short story writer. His stories are known for their surprise endings. William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825–88), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833–65). William's parents had married on April 20, 1858. When William was three, his mother died after birthing her third child, and he and his
William A. Porter CA. In 1999, Porter and his wife Joan gave $25 million to MIT's Sloan School of Management: In 2007, the Porters gave 250,000 shares of E-Trade stock to Adams State College (worth approximately $5.8 million at the time), the largest gift in school's history. William A. Porter William A. Porter was an American businessperson who, along with Bernie Newcomb founded the first electronic stock brokerage, E*TRADE. After the success of E*TRADE, Porter also co-founded International Securities Exchange (ISE) with Marty Averbuch and became (the first) chairman of ISE on his 70th birthday in 1998. Porter was the former chief executive