Dream of a shrine dies with dreamer

Frank Craig had that impulse, and authorities contend it cost him his life.

For decades the old rancher and farmhand collected the artifacts of early San Joaquin Valley agriculture, scattering them across his small ranch outside Hickman, a tiny farm town about 15 miles east of here.

Ten years ago, after he inherited a small fortune from a brother, the bachelor farmer became determined to enshrine his collection of mule-era plows and antique tractors in a museum. He envisioned an adobe building with a copper roof, to be called, grandly enough, the Central Valley Museum of Agriculture.

"He wanted it as a shrine to his past," recalled Buzz Johnson, a longtime friend. "He wanted to put it all in a building where everybody could see."

This conversation took place Wednesday, outside Department 5 of the Stanislaus County Superior Court. For three months, Howard Douglas Porter, the preacher whom Craig had entrusted to shepherd his farm museum, has been on trial, accused of stealing the 85-year-old's assets and drowning him in a staged auto accident. Porter has pleaded not guilty.

Craig died on a spring afternoon two years ago, after the compact pickup he was riding in plunged into an irrigation canal near his home. He had not been able to drive -- let alone walk -- since being injured severely in another wreck two years earlier.

In both crashes, the driver was Porter, a well-known high school wrestling coach and church pastor who had simultaneously built state champion grapplers and standing-room-only crowds at the Hickman Community Church.

Craig considered Porter the perfect man for his museum project. God's lawyer, Craig called him. In 2000, the farmer gave Porter full control of his finances and property. Land for the museum was purchased behind the church, and plans were sketched out.

But the museum never got built. What did get built was a colony of houses for Porter's immediate family near the foothills east of Hickman; he also bought residences for other relatives; all, allegedly, with Craig's money.

In time, according to trial testimony, Craig began to suspect that his trust in Porter was misplaced. He wondered about the first crash. In that 2002 wreck, Porter's pickup had slammed into a tree on a country road.