Mildred Lorraine Battaglia

Born in Detroit in 1930, Mildred (Millie) Lorraine was in the middle of the pack of 15 children to Laura (née Butler) and Neil McKinnon. At 13, Millie left home to live with her older sister and started working at a potato chip factory under a fake name.

At 19, Millie married her first husband, Jeremiah McBain, and delivered her only child, a daughter, Lorri. Divorced and a single mother at age 21, Millie worked at odd jobs while raising her daughter in Detroit.

After remarrying in 1954, Millie took an entry-level factory job at GM and raised her daughter with her second husband, Fred Stonina, until 1970, when she divorced again. Millie then made the decision to advance as a line worker at the Livonia Fisher Body Plant where she met her third and final husband, a young widower named Jim.

In 1970, Millie would see her daughter married to Stephen Paszek II of Harrisville, MI, while welcoming Jim’s five children (Bobby, Ken, James, Jackie, and Joe) into her life and becoming a family through marriage in 1973.

Together, Millie and Jim would witness Lorri and Steve have four beautiful children (Amy Jo, Stephen III, Megan, and Elizabeth) and settle in Livonia.

Millie and Jim lived happily, enjoying summer weekends and family gatherings at their cottage in Grass Lake, working continuously at GM until their respective retirements in 1993 and 1994. Shortly after retirement, Jim would succumb to Leukemia in 1994.

As a widow, Millie quickly became more involved in activities with St. Collette Catholic Church in Livonia where she cultivated a close circle of friends who would travel, gamble, mall-walk, and enjoy many festive nights laughing away with margaritas.

Millie was a social butterfly that attracted conversation wherever she went. As a dedicated mall-walker, Millie found companionship with Daryl Cline until his death in 2018.

The rise of the internet and ancestry allowed Millie to connect with her long-lost niece, Judy McKinnon Holtom, who became a staple in her family phone calls in 2016 and a joyous addition so late in life.

Millie relished good family times, good meals, and good books. She enjoyed the simple pleasures of a hot cup of tea with a cookie, or a nice ice cream cone. And she never left home without her lipstick.

As the last surviving member of the original 15, Millie is preceded in death by siblings Nora, Dorothy, Russell, Chuck, Donald, Ken, Pauline, Geraldine, Helen, Tom, Bobby, Peggy, Carole, and Baby McKinnon.

Millie will be greatly missed by all her surviving family.