Because Thanksgiving fell on the 26th that year, said their daughter, Bonita Mills, “whenever Thanksgiving came, that was their anniversary.”
The holiday’s giving spirit still defines the Millses nearly 20 Thanksgivings after their passing.
That spirit will come alive throughout the community when churches and social service agencies do all that’s needed so that neighbors in need can get their fill.
Family Needs Inc., which grew out of the kitchen in the Mills’ modest home on Springfield’s southeast side, will serve up its Thanksgiving dinner to about 70 this Thursday at the northwest corner of Limestone Street and Grand Avenue.
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Bonita Mills said her best guess is that her parents started the tradition about 65 years ago.
“It’s a shame, we should have records,” she said.
But her parents weren’t sticklers about records in the way her mother was a stickler about something else.
“She wanted to have people share,” Bonita Mills said. “They had to share everything.”
The Mills’ Thanksgiving project received its earliest help from the South Fountain Seventh Day Adventist Church, where Mr. Mills was an elder and Mrs. Mills a member of the Dorcas and Society and King’s Daughters. The church continues to support Family Needs today.
From the start, Mr. and Mrs. Mills organized what originally was called the church’s Family Service Center. Early locations included a house at the corner of Yellow Springs Street and Innisfallen Avenue and - in their daughter’s recollections - “a little shack” farther south on Yellow Springs.
Mr. Mills worked as an assistant pathologist at Community Hospital, and Mrs. Mills not only raised a handful of children but, with her husband, was a foster parent to more than 125.
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They had done decades’ worth of service by the time a son wrote a grant and the former owners of a convenience store at Limestone Street and Grand Avenue deeded the building to the church so the Mills’ work could continue.
Then in 1991, President George H.W. Bush recognized the Millses as the 412th of the 1,000 points of light he highlighted in an effort to underscore the importance of volunteers to the nation - volunteers whose efforts represented what he called “a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.”
Perhaps because she saw the work as her parents’ doing, Bonita Mills did not get involved in their lifes’s work until after their passing, her father’s in 1998, her mother’s in 2000.
But she brought her husband, James Mills, with her, and, found her retired friend Ella Barnes at the center.
Barnes herself got involved, so that another friend, Carrie Johnson, would have a chance to eat a noon meal after making that meal for all other comers.
Because Johnson “did not have time to eat” before going back to work, Barnes agreed to take on the pantry duties and pay the bills, in part because she grew up in a family like Bonita Mills’.
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Barnes remembers “a houseful of folks” in her Louisiana home. Some stayed until they got a job, others stayed until they worked enough to move out, and Barnes remembers her father saying, “This is a big house, it’s big enough for all of us.”
Her family also “never got to think we were above needing.”
Although Sheehan Brothers Vending provides take-home sandwiches and snacks for those in need, Family Needs is like many volunteer agencies, always trying to make ends meet.
Volunteers recently had a painting party. Last Wednesday, there was an open house to spread the word about its food pantry, clothing and hot meal services and to let people know the facilities need updated flooring, some new freezer units and folding chairs for overflow days.
Four community members involved in minority health issues also have stepped forward to mount a fundraising effort and connect Family Needs with the era of grant writing.
It’s still a humble organization.
But with so many still caring enough to pitch in, one can’t help but think that Edwin and Dorothea Mills would consider this year’s Thanksgiving meal not only at Family Needs, Inc., but elsewhere in the community, a perfect way to celebrate what would have been their 88th wedding anniversary.
For information about Family Needs, Inc., call (937) 521-2800.
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