[obituary published on https://starnewsgroup.com/ November 20, 2018; reproduced on website of First U.U. Church of Essex County with permission from Star News Group]
Harold E. Mills passed away on Monday, November 5, 2018 at the age of 96. He had been living for about two years in Wall Township. He lived most of his life in Maplewood, NJ.
Harold was born on May 29, 1922 in Massillon, Ohio and he spent most of his youth growing up in Canton, Ohio, where he graduated from Canton William McKinley Jr. Senior High School in 1940. While at McKinley Harold sold hot dogs and other items at the high school football games where the great future Cleveland Browns running back and Hall-of-Famer Marion Motley ... was a star performer for the team....
Harold joined the Navy as a reservist in 1940 and was activated in 1941. He then spent the four years in the Pacific Theater. The ship he served on the most the USS Cowell was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its actions from April-June 1945 in fighting off Japanese kamikazes during the Battle of Okinawa.
Harold graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1950 and then moved to East Orange and began working at Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) in Newark, where he worked as an Electrical Engineer for more than three decades until the early 1980s.
Harold began attending "Sunday Evening Club" meetings at the Calvary Methodist Church in East Orange in the late 1940s. That is where he first met his wife to be Lorraine. Harold married Lorraine on April 10, 1954 at Calvary Methodist Church in East Orange and they moved to Newark for three years before moving to Maplewood in 1957 where they lived for almost 60 years. Lorraine and Harold traveled to at least twenty states, including Hawaii and Alaska. There were also many overseas trips for the couple, including six trips to Ireland (where they visited Lorraine and Charlotte's relatives) and also China, New Zealand, Australia, Costa Rica, Israel and Turkey, among other countries. They also traveled to many provinces in Canada, including Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland Labrador and New Brunswick. Harold and Lorraine, who liked taking bike trips together, sometimes with other members of the family, rode two-hundred-and-sixty miles on bicycles during their two-week trip to Nova Scotia. Harold and his wife and family also made several memorable trips to California, the state of Pennsylvania, including the Gettysburg National Military Park ... and to Baxter State Park in Maine, ... among other memorable adventures through the nation.
A devout member and the treasurer and full-time handyman at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County on Cleveland Street in Orange for more than 40 years, Harold also played violin in the South Orange Symphony Orchestra for many years and also played the piano for many years. He liked to play on the piano many Baroque compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel, along with the classical works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the German operatic composition musical stylings of Wilhelm Richard Wagner and the Classical/Romantic transitional era compositions of German Ludwig van Beethoven. He especially liked to play the music of composers of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. He also played the violin at the South Orange Symphony and played many operatic pieces of Wagner, Giacomo Puccini, Achille-Claude Debussy and other legendary compositional figures throughout musical history.
Harold was a generous and charitable giver to many environmental, Native American, and other civil rights and civil liberties organizations and causes through the years and many causes for underprivileged children and others. He was also an efficient and effective do-it-yourself fixer upper of his home in Maplewood, the Unitarian/Universalist Church in Orange, and many other sites. in addition, Harold was also fascinated with trains; he and wife Lorraine and his family took several memorable train trips over the years, including one to Miami, Florida and Keys area in December of 1972/January of 1973. As a boy Harold began his love of trains as his father was a train engineer/conductor and his grandfather were a minister. For a time during his youth and after high school Harold worked laying track and doing other jobs for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (later the Erie Lackawanna Railroad and now the Erie Lackawanna Railway), headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.
Harold donated much of his time and money to various charitable organizations throughout the years and he served in many volunteer jobs, including contributing to several civil rights/civil liberties organizations. and doing environmental work in the Maplewood/South Orange/Orange/East Orange/Montclair/East Essex County vicinity and surrounding counties and communities. ...
Harold is survived by two daughters, Laurie and Patricia, three sons, Edmund, Keith [wife Joanne] and Bruce, and by a granddaughter, Alexis. Also, he leaves behind many loving cousins, nephews, nieces and other relatives, in addition to many friends he made throughout the years. Harold was predeceased by his wife of 60 years, Lorraine, in April, 2014. Also, his younger brother Don and fellow veteran of World War II passed away in November of 2013 and his other younger brother, Robert, passed away earlier. Harold also leaves behind relatives and friends in Lakewood, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and other locations. Lorraine's sister, Charlotte, a great and special friend and confidante to Lorraine, passed away in July of this year at age 89 and Lorraine and Charlotte's brother, Edmund Blaine Greene, a World War II veteran, passed away after a sudden violent storm sprang up on June 26, 1946 after a canoe trip on a collegiate geological expedition from Rutgers University in Piscataway to the St. John's area of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
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