Milton Ladon Reese

Milton LaDon Reese was born on November 9, 1929, in St Louis, Missouri, and passed away peacefully in the afternoon of September 27, 2025, in a retirement community in Austin, Texas. He was almost 96 and had lived a full life as a dedicated family man and soldier, caretaker and good friend and neighbor.

Milton’s formative years were spent in the care of his grandfather Sam Larue and grandmother Millie LaRue (who lived to be 101 and saw men go from horse and buggies to walking on the moon) in the small coal town of Elvins, Mo, where Sam and Millie ran a restaurant and pool hall. His fondest early memories were summers spent with his grandparents and his older siblings -- Jim, Maxine and Willa Jean -- hunting and fishing and swimming on the Current River. His mother, Dora, worked in the factories of St. Louis during WWII, leaving her children in the care of her parents. Little is known about his father, Emmit Reese.

Milton graduated from high school in May of 1947. He took a bus, along with a couple other classmates, to St. Louis and enlisted in the Army that June, completing basic training at Fort Knox, Ky, before joining the Military Police and rotating to Germany in June of ’48 for the beginning of his 21-year career as a soldier, MP, photo-interpretive specialist and 1 st Sergeant. His duty stations took him – along with his young family -- around the world: from Japan and Germany and Spain, to tours stateside in White Sands, NM, Georgia, Virginia, Washington and Yuma, AZ, interspersed with solo tours in Korea and Vietnam. He received many honors during his time in the Army for his distinguished service –including as a lead member of Eisenhower’s security detail when the general exited Germany to return stateside and run for president.

It was on his first tour, on a duty pass in Tegernsee that he met the love of his life, Frieda Ay, at a café where a band was playing and couples were dancing. They married in May of 1950 and had their first son, Roland, in July of ’51. Their second son, Donald was born in ’54, their daughter Debra in ’60 and their youngest, Roger in ’62. And it was to this little family that Milton dedicated the rest of his life, doing varied jobs over the years – from Buick salesman, receiving manager at a Montgomery Ward and a stint as a long-haul trucker --before becoming a maintenance and construction supervisor for NASA at the White Sands Test Facility outside of Las Cruces, NM. He retired in 1992 – around the time of his second open-heart surgery – and began a new chapter on the roads of America in an RV, with Frieda beside him and her chicken soup in the fridge. Together they put coins into every slot machine they could and visited almost every state in the union – even driving to Alaska twice – but they never made it to Maine. They were close once, but it was raining and they ran out of time.

They were together 65 years before she died beside him in October of 2015 as a patient in an Alzheimer’s care unit in Austin, Texas. She was 85. He’d spend the rest of his life in Austin, missing her but soldiering on.

The motto for the first infantry division is “No mission too far. No sacrifice too great.” He stood as a great guardian of that motto over the years – as well as a great example of how we all grow and change and become more compassionate through our travels and the people we meet.

He was ultimately the patriarch of an extended family of 31: including his four kids and their spouses, their six children and spouses, and 12 great grandchildren!

He is much loved and will be greatly missed.

A private graveside service with military honors will be held October 6 th at Cook Walden/Forest Oaks funeral home in Austin, Texas.

Please consider making donations in his honor to the organizations supporting Veterans groups, Alzheimer’s research, or your local food bank.

Please consider making a donation toward an endowed scholarship established in Milton’s name to honor his military service and memory to support ROTC students at the University of Texas at Austin. Gifts can be made online at giving.utexas.edu. Please reference the “Milton and Frieda Reese Endowed ROTC Scholarship” in the description of your gift. Gifts can also be made by mail to The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, Mail Stop A3000, Austin, TX 78712.