Article: Star Tribune: WWII vet's service is a cut above
August 27, 2009 - Anthony Lonetree, Star Tribune. Wartime kindnesses inspired Ken Porwoll to volunteer cutting homeless men's hair for 25 years. He'll be honored with a McKnight award today.
Every Wednesday morning, the homeless men arrive for their haircuts at the Listening House of St. Paul, eager to take a seat in what was once a dental chair.
Some will eye their barber, and a nearby portrait of people in an 1890s barber shop, and they'll ask: "Which one are you?"
The barber, Ken Porwoll, takes it in stride. He is, after all, 89 years old -- and as a former prisoner of war, and father of nine children, he has done a lot of living.
It was the kindness of others that helped Porwoll survive the Bataan Death March and 3 1/2 years in a Japanese prison camp during World War II, he has said. And for 25 years, with electric clippers in hand, he has worked to repay that debt by volunteering to cut hair at the drop-in center for the homeless.
Today, Porwoll will be among six people receiving a 2009 Virginia McKnight Binger Award in Human Service from the McKnight Foundation -- an honor recognizing "the life-changing difference one person can make through service."
He was a tank commander in the Minnesota Army National Guard when he and his fellow soldiers, undermanned, were routed by the Japanese in the Philippines, and then led on the Bataan Death March. Along the way, Philippine peasant women risked their lives by leaving cans of water and food along the road to help the prisoners, Porwoll told the Star Tribune in 2003.
He saw the women's sacrifice, he said, and he took stock of himself: "Get with it, Ken," he said.
But as he sat in his Roseville living room Wednesday, he spoke of more than just war. He is inspired by family, too. In the kitchen was Kenzie Martin, one of his four daughters, who had just arrived from Colorado to attend today's awards ceremony.
And it was the retired salesman's five sons who were the first recipients of his haircuts. At least until high school, that is, "when they got their own ideas about what they wanted," Porwoll's wife, Mary Ellen, said Wednesday. "You know how that goes."
Ken Porwoll recalled that if his sons weren't happy with their cuts, he'd try to leave their hair a little longer the next time.
Today, he still aims to please, he said. He will turn the men in the old dental chair toward a mirror, and he will ask them: "Do you like what you see?"
Most of them do.
Here's a look at the other winners of the $10,000 awards:
Anthony Lonetree is at alonetree@startribune.com