Mildred Frances Carroll

My mother, Mildred Frances Brown Carroll, entered this life on

February 28, 1931 in Alexandria, Louisiana. Born to young parents, Averlee (Coco) and Earl Brown, she was raised in the extended family in which her mother was raised. As a result, she, her sister Earline and brother Bernard, no doubt grew up thinking that their Uncle Billy, and Aunts Fay and Beverly were also siblings, as they were close in age…..

After a childhood that consisted of being instructed by nuns, and completing high school, Mildred worked as a clerk in various department and drug stores. By then, her sibling/ aunts had married and moved north to the Midwest, as did her mother Averlee after remarrying Peter Dual. By the late 1940s, 50’s, Mildred decided to follow also. Her mother was now in Michigan raising additional siblings Peter Alfred, Lloyd, and Patricia, and Mildred somehow convinced her mother to allow her to move to Chicago. But only under the supervision of her aunt Fay, who by then had married and become a mother herself…..

Feeling somewhat alone in the big city of Chicago, this quiet, shy, southern-bred young lady nonetheless managed to make friends, one of which was a young lady by the name of Betty Baugh. She also attended “Beauty College” to train as a “culturist”. Just imagine 47th Street/ Bronzeville in the 1950s… Enough said….

Mildred, now known as “Millie”, introduced Betty to her younger brother Bernard during one of his visits to Chicago. They ended up getting married and starting a family (Dwain and Stacy) and thereby cemented a friendship between Millie and Betty that lasted several decades…

Also during this time in the mid-1950s, while working as one of the first “Negro” clerks at Marshall Field & Co. (a job Fay no doubt was responsible for), Millie met a friend for lunch at Roosevelt University. The friend needed to obtain notes from a classmate, and in the cafeteria of the university, Millie was introduced to an equally shy, bookish young chemist and soldier, Oscar L. Carroll. Marrying in November 1956, their one and only child, Jocelyn Frances, was born in 1958…

Settling on Chicago’s south side, this trio lived through the 1960s and 70s, witnessing world and societal changes as everyone did. Never to be known as a “woman’s libber”, Millie still wanted some independence, enrolling in Chicago State University to finish her Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education, graduating in 1974. She then began a 20 year career as an elementary school teacher in the Chicago Public School system.

The last two decades of her life were her “best”, as my mother often told me. Why, I’d asked her when she said this. She saw her only child graduate from college, obtain a Master’s degree, travel, and become a parent herself to Millie’s only grandchild, Tara. After Tara and I moved from California back to Chicago in 2002, Millie became Tara’s self-appointed education czarina, overseeing much of Tara’s early development and education. Thereby cementing a friendship that should have lasted longer……

In declining health in the past few years, Millie still managed to see family and friends occasionally, but was happiest in her small tidy home, telling any child playing outside to get off the lawn. She left us on July 12th, 2015 after a 2 year battle with Alzheimer’s dementia and Parkinson’s. She leaves behind family, friends, neighbors, former students (who would call every Christmas to say “hello or thank you”) and a quiet life well lived….

Jocelyn