Robert Paul Millon

Robert Millon was born May 17, 1932 in Englewood New Jersey. The youngest of three brothers, he looked up to his older brother Rene who was 10 years older than him as his intellectual role model and his middle brother as his athletic role model. As a result or not, my father grew to become an intellectual who later in life obtained a PhD in Latin American history. He also developed into a good athlete. He enjoyed playing football, running track, and boxing. My father was a strong man and he maintained his strength up until the day he died, having an amazingly powerful grip despite having lost nearly forty pounds of muscle over the years. Despite his athletic prowess, my father was always modest about his athletic ability, often referring to himself as just better than average. This was not false modesty however. That is what he really thought. Knowing my father and having had him teach me boxing and football, I knew he was better than he was saying. One day, I remember my father telling me a story about how when he was in high school, he started a boxing club and would box with his friends for fun. One of these friends later grew up to become a professional fighter. After winning his first professional fight, he challenged my father to a three round boxing match. My father said he beat the guy so soundly that his friend quit after the second round. In his typical modesty, my father underestimated his accomplishment by saying, that his friend should not have chosen to become a professional fighter.

Besides his intelligence and his athletic ability, my father was a good son, who loved his parents dearly. My father would always speak admiringly about his parents, admiring his father’s brilliance, his ability with languages, and his manual dexterity. Of his mother, he would admire her kindness, her love for her children and her humanity. He would also often talk about what a brilliant cook she was and how she made everything she cooked better than you could get anywhere else.

My father was a lover of food and appreciated good food and good wine his entire life. He was the kind of person who was willing to travel hundreds of miles just for a good meal. Taking after his French ancestry, he considered food to be one of the greatest pleasures in life. My father had the good fortune of marrying my mother who had a great, delicate palate and was also a good cook and a lover of food. We had many great meals together over the years .

All these things, while important, do not capture the essence of who my father was. My father was a great humanitarian who wanted to better society for the benefit of all. He championed social justice causes, racial equality, and topics that are popular today such as free healthcare but certainly were not popular back in the 1960’s. My father participated in the civil rights movement, was a member of the NAACP and helped desegregate the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was a student working on his PhD.

My father’s good nature and sense of responsibility, transferred to his family life as well. He was a loving husband and a loving father. My father and mother only had one son. It was just the three of us, so we were especially close while I was growing up and also later in life. My father’s whole life revolved around my mother and me. He loved us deeply. My father spent countless hours playing with me and helping me with my homework while I was growing up. My whole life, I always felt that I could count on my dad.

My father’s health started to decline in 2013 when my mother passed away. In 2024, I had a health crisis that put me in and out of the hospital 4 times from October 2024 through January 2025. It was not seeing his son that started my father’s downward spiral that finally ended in his death this May. My father was a man who felt deeply and loved deeply. When his family was okay, he was okay.

Above all, my father was a brave man and a lover of life. I knew this all along, but it became crystal clear to me at the end of his life. Despite all the health problems he had near the end of his life, having had multiple aspiration pneumonias, urinary tract infections, painful bed sores, having to be fed through a feeding tube, and being contracted and unable to move from so many trips to the hospital, despite al of this, my father wanted to live. Every time, we went into the hospital, without fail, a doctor would ask me to consider having my father be DNR, do not resuscitate, and every time I told them no. My father was full code. After one of our hospital visits, I checked with my father, and he indeed confirmed that he wanted to be full code. My father was a fighter and he wanted to fight til the end. My father displayed this bravery throughout his life, whether it be intellectual or physical bravery. A good example of my father’s bravery that comes to mind happened when I was 9 or 10. We went on a family vacation to Padre Island. I remember being in the ocean with the water slightly below my chest. Suddenly, I felT my father put his arm around me and start swimming sideways. After a couple of minutes, we caught a wave and swam back to shore. At the time, I thought my dad was playing; Later he explained to me that we had been caught in a rip tide and were being swept out to sea. My father said to me, “You didn’t realize the water was above your head when I grabbed you, and I didn’t tell you what was happening so you wouldn’t panic. Without having learned how to escape a rip tide, my father kept his composure while he thought of how to escape the situation and save our lives. He looked around and saw the white crest of waves in the distance. My father swam towards the waves in order to catch a wave that would carry us to shore, Without knowing so, my father did exactly what you are supposed to do to escape a rip tide. He swam parallel to the shore. My father staying composed and keeping a level head, when most people would have panicked and drowned, saved both our lives. Countless people have died in rip tides, including world class swimmers, because they get caught in a rip tide, panic, and try swimming against the current. My father was too smart and level headed to do that.

Everything I have and all that I am as a man I owe to my father. Not only do I owe him my life, he taught me his sense of humor and his love of nature. I remember hiking in the mountain forests of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, sitting on a fallen tree to rest and watch the snow lightly floating in the air, enjoying the cool, crisp air, the smell of the pines, and the peacefulness of nature. I learned my love of food and cooking from my father. I learned my sense of justice from my father. I learned to love literature and writing from my father. Though my father was a historian and had published two non fiction books, since he was a kid my father wanted to be a fiction writer. A year before he died, my father got his wish. A publishing house in Great Britain published his first novel, a satire of U.S. capitalism. My father had a great imagination. When he was a kid he could will himself to dream whatever he wanted, such as being a hunter in Africa or an explorer in the Amazon.

During a period in our lives that my father was out of work, he moved to Miami to live with his father while he looked for work, while my mother and I stayed in Mexico City. My father would write my mother a letter a week and he would take the time to include a story from his own imagination in the letter that my mother would read to me.

I was a kid who loved to lie down in the couch and watch TV all day. My dad changed that. He taught me how to love sports and exercise, which I still do today.

My father always gave me good advice and looked out for me. The career I have now, I owe to my father. I had originally, studied writing and wanted to be a screenwriter. After many years of trying to sell my writing and getting no place, my father advised me to study psychology. Following my father’s advice is what gave me the career and the life I have now.

I wouldn’t be the man I am today without my father. He was a role model and an inspiration to me. I am forever grateful to have had him as my dad. My father told me when he was still healthy, “whatever happens, don’t put me in a nursing home.” And I never did. With the help of my wife Joanna, I took care of my father until the end. It was my privilege to do so, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do have been able to do it. I will miss you dearly daddy. We spent a lifetime together, did everything together. I am not as strong as you are, but I will try my best to follow your example and be strong and be a lover of life because that is the final lesson that I learned from you . This is not Goodbye Daddy. It’s I’ll see you later.

A visitation for Robert will be held Thursday, May 22, 2025 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Forest Park Westheimer Funeral Home, 12800 Westheimer Road, Houston, TX 77077. A funeral service will occur Friday, May 23, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, 12800 Westheimer Road, Houston, TX 77077. A committal service will occur Friday, May 23, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM at Forest Park Westheimer Cemetery, 12800 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77077.