M. Mildred Miller

M. Mildred Cordray Miller passed away June 29, 2016 at age 101. Mildred was born November 9, 1914 in Fort Reno, Oklahoma and graduated from High School as valedictorian in Mountain View High School, Oklahoma. She received a BS and Masters degree in Education from West Texas State College in Canyon, Texas. She served as an elementary teacher in Amarillo, Texas and in Billings, Montana. She was both a classroom teacher and director of the Gifted Program for the West Side Public School district in Omaha, Nebraska. She also served as president of her teachers’ sorority, Alpha-Delta-Kappa.

She married the love of her life, Raymond W. Miller, a petroleum engineer whose job with Northern Natural Gas brought him eventually to Omaha. They were married for 65 years and enjoyed traveling together. They made many trips with the Wally Bynum Airstream club and had many great friendships among this group. Although they loved the American West, they also took the trip of a life time—a 6 month tour to 22 countries in Europe—with 3 other couples, each of whom drove the VW vans they had bought in Germany. Mildred took almost a hundred rolls of film and loved talking about this great adventure.

Teaching was Mildred’s passion, but her other great love was sewing. She was a masterful and creative seamstress sewing clothes for her daughter both when she was a child and a professional woman. When her daughter suffered cancer and chemotherapy, Mildred made her 72 hats, which began another “career” for Mildred. In the last 15 years of her life she made more than 14,000 hats which she donated to Methodist Estabrook Cancer Center where she was affectionately known as the “Hat Lady.” As the “Hat Lady,” she was featured in a local television story and appeared in feature stories in the newspaper.

Mildred was fortunate in having great neighbors in west Omaha; for forty years, the neighborhood women had a Monday coffee group. After Mildred was less mobile, the women all came to her house, bringing, as she said, “the world to her.” The love and friendship of this group kept Mildred young and vital in her later years. She was also fortunate in having the attentiveness of several nieces and nephews. Particularly outstanding was the care and devotion of Tracie Cox, an employee of VNA, and Mildred’s personal assistant and companion for more than a decade.

Mildred was preceded in death by her husband in 2002 and by her two sisters, Naomi Moore and Thelma Howell, and her brother, Allen Cordray. Mildred is survived by her daughter, Mary Ann Sullivan and her husband William of Lima, Ohio and her son, Doug Miller and his wife Delores of Omaha.

MEMORIAL VISITATION will occur at Westlawn-Hillcrest Funeral Home on Thursday, July 7 from 5-7pm with a Celebration of Life service following the Visitation.

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be made to cancer charities.