Mildred McLean Pinkerton

Millie McLean was born on a farm in Middleburg, FL in 1930. At 18 our city mouse moved promptly to Jacksonville and never looked back. A few years later she met her future husband, Bill Pinkerton. They dated over pizza, went to jazz clubs, looked fabulous doing it, and moved into a little house in Riverside where they had their daughter Bonnie in 1957, and then a bigger house on Willow Branch where they had their son Kenny a year later.

Millie worked for a handful of insurance companies before settling on Shelley, Middlebrooks, and O’Leary where she was apparently so good at her job that they sent her to Hawaii as a retirement present many years later. Millie loved going to work, loved dressing up for work, loved the computers the company brought in. Later, during retirement she served as a board member of her condo association, bought her own computer, sent out newsletters, planned parties and had a great time doing it with her group of bridge playing, afternoon-cocktail-drinking-by-the-pool neighbors.

Millie made the best roast you’ll ever eat. She loved an afternoon glass of wine on the porch. She got her hair done every Saturday morning. She went to Sunday services every week at FBC Jacksonville until she could no longer drive, and then she watched from her iPad. As a kid born during the Great Depression, Millie never saw a plate of food that couldn’t be turned into leftovers and reheated later. As many times as she went to Dreamette for soft serve, she always insisted on getting a large cone and could usually eat all of it. For some reason she loved the Jacksonville Jaguars and loved even more smack talking her grandkids when the Jags were winning. Millie traveled all over the Western Hemisphere, to Canada, NYC, Boston, Panama, the Caribbean, Hawaii, New Mexico, Colorado, Nashville, Arkansas and Alabama. As a true Floridian, any temperature under 80 was too cold and required a jacket. Even though she looked extensively at the menu at every seafood restaurant we ever visited, her go-to order was fried shrimp, fried fish and a baked potato. Every. Time.

She was fiercely independent, stubborn in that Scotch-Irish “set in your ways” kind of way, proud of what she achieved in life, but most proud of and most devoted to her family.

Millie is preceded in death by her dear husband, Bill. Between her two kids Bonnie and Kenny, Millie has nine grandkids: Lauren (Heidi), Daniel (Jessi), Kyle (Jordyn), Matthew (Abbie), Bradley (Sarah), Jacob (Gabi), Lindsay (Sean), Caitlin (Austin), Mitchell, as well as eight great grandkids and counting, many nieces and nephews, and a menagerie of grand dogs and cats. She sat countless hours on airplanes and in cars over the last forty years making sure to spend as much time with them as possible.

Millie spent her 94 years on this earth raising a beautiful family, being a successful career woman way ahead of her time, eating and drinking the best food and wine, and having a great time doing it. We miss her so much already but are so happy we got to be along for the journey.

A visitation for Millie will be held at 11:00 AM on Friday, February 7th, 2025, at the Riverside Event Pavilion, 1373 Memorial Park Road, Jacksonville, Florida, 32205. Her funeral will begin at 12:00 PM, Friday, February 7th, 2025, at the Riverside Event Pavilion. Her committal service will take place at 1:00 PM, at Riverside Memorial Park, 7242 Normandy Blvd. Jacksonville, Florida, 32205.