Presley Norton Yoder was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on February 26, 1932. His father was Presley Norton (1907–1944) of New York, and his mother was Blanche La Rose Yoder of Guayaquil.
Presley Norton's grandfather was Evermont Hope Norton (1873–1960) a businessman from Richmond, Virginia, who was a former president and chairman of the Ecuadorian Corporation, Ltd. and the International Products Corporation. Evermont went to South America in 1911 as president of the Guayaquil and Quito Railway Company, after an early career as a stockbroker in New York. He developed the Ecuadorian Railroad, which rises from the Pacific Coast city of Guayaquil, over the Andes Mountains to Quito. Evermont graduated in 1895 from the University of Virginia. He started in Wall Street the following year, and until 1899 was senior partner in Norton & Tunstall. He served in Naval Intelligence in World War I. He was married several times, one time to Lily Bouvier Morison of Saint Louis, MO who was a great aunt of Jackeline Bouvier Kennedy.[1]
Presley Norton's father died when he was about 12 years old. He inherited shares worth $600,000, which by the time he was of age in 1950 had become $5,000,000.[2]
Norton had dual citizenship in Ecuador and the United States, because he was born in Ecuador and his father was born in New York. In 1950 he joined the American army, which stationed him in Hawaii (1950–1952).
Between 1950 and 1953 he studied literature and history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He then went to Paris and enrolled at the Sorbonne, where he took courses in the history of French civilization and contemporary philosophy until 1955.[3]
In 1960 Norton married Leonor Pérez Gómez, with whom he had 4 children. After divorcing Leonor he married an English woman, Georgina Marten Sturt, in 1973. He divorced Georgina in 1978 and married María Isabel Fernández Salvador Eastman in 1982, with whom he had 2 children.
In 1962 he started the first television channel in Guayaquil, Ecuador, "Televisión Ecuatoriana Canal 4" (Ecuadorian TV Channel 4) with the help of ABC (American Broadcasting Inc) of New York who put up 1/3 of the money while he put up a 2/3 investment. Later he started Channel 6 in Quito.
He died on May 8, 1993, of a heart attack.
