Longtime Malibu resident Eleanor Patricia Mills, who raised her eight children in the community, died April 24. She was 78.
Born on May 29, 1929 in Flint, Mich., Mills was the daughter of Polish immigrants Mary and Peter Skowron. Mills attended All Saints Elementary and Catholic High School in Flint until her family moved to Santa Monica in 1946. She graduated from Saint Monica High School in 1947. Following high school, she received an associate’s degree from Santa Monica City College and also attended Mount Saint Mary’s College and UCLA. She worked at Packard Bell from 1951-1952.
The courtship between Mills and her husband Jim in 1951 was like a love story made for movies. In his memoirs, Jim Mills writes about the first time he met Eleanor: “Who was that girl? I said to myself, such a beautiful, attractive girl with a pleasant smile. Was she looking at me or was it my imagination?” The couple married on Oct. 11, 1952 at Saint Monica’s Church and went to Mazatlan, Mexico for their honeymoon. They were together until Jim died in 1998. They had five sons and three daughters from 1953 to 1972.
After living in Venice, Ocean Park and Santa Monica for several years, in 1958 they bought a home in Malibu’s Corral Canyon, where she had lived until the November 2007 fire.
Tragedy struck the family in 1973 when Mills’ brother, Chester Skowron, and his wife, Dory, were murdered during the robbery of their hardware store in Flint. Mills and her husband helped raise the murdered couple’s four sons: Chester Jr., Steve, Edward and Matthew. It was soon after this that Mills was named Mother of the Year by The Malibu Times.
Mills volunteered, took on hobbies and worked as a travel agent in the 1970s and 1980s. At Our Lady of Malibu Church she helped out at rummage sales, served coffee and doughnuts every Sunday after mass and worked in the parish office. At Our Lady of Malibu School she was a den mother for the Cub Scouts and volunteered as a driver for field trips and sporting events. She also volunteered at the Malibu Lagoon State Park museum gift shop and fed the homeless at the Saint Joseph’s soup kitchen in Venice. Some of her hobbies included gardening, sewing, interior design, cooking and watching Lakers basketball.
Mills’ home in Corral Canyon was badly damaged in the November fire, and at the time of her death she was working on the final plans for rebuilding. When her doctor asked how she was holding up after the fire, she replied, “I’m not worried, my children will take care of things.”
Mills is survived by her sons, Chris, Steve, Carl, John and Jeff; daughters Carol Tally, Mary Hershide and Teresa Mills-Faraudo; grandchildren Katherine Driscoll, Giulio Faraudo, Michael and Brian Hershide, Rachel, Carrie, Christina, Kaitlin and Victoria Mills, Chad Skowron, James Tally, and Elliot Zino and great grandchildren Chiara and Lorenzo Zino.
A public memorial mass will take place at 11 a.m. on Saturday at Our Lady of Malibu Church, located at 3625 Winter Canyon Road. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be sent to Our Lady of Malibu Church or the American Heart Association.