Dorothy A. Mills, retired R.N. and homemaker, of Shelton, died peacefully on Saturday, April 23 at the age of 91. She was the beloved wife of the late Donald H. Mills. She was born in Derby on September 11, 1924, daughter of the late Walter and Gladys (Bardwell) Didsbury and was a lifelong Shelton resident. Unfailingly loving, kind, generous and fun, she made a positive impact on the lives of everyone who knew her.
Dorothy was the salutatorian of the Shelton High School Class of 1942, and an R.N. graduate of the Bridgeport Hospital School of Nursing. She also attended New York and Bridgeport University. At the end of her nursing training, she joined the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, and served at Fort Devens until the end of World War II. In later life, she tried to get the Cadet Nurses recognized as veterans. She worked for the Norwalk Public Health Department, Beth Israel Hospital in New York, and Bridgeport and Griffin Hospitals. She met Donald Mills at the Ritz Ballroom in Bridgeport and married him in 1952. They raised five children. She was an amazing, loving mother to her own children and a second mother to many of their friends, who affectionately called her General Mills. She loved music, played the piano and wrote poetry. As a result of encouraging her children to play instruments, Dorothy and Donald attended twenty consecutive years of Shelton public school band concerts and countless parades. She also cared for her own mother and her husband’s parents until their deaths, as well as many other family members and friends.
Dorothy was a lifetime member of the Bridgeport Hospital School of Nursing Alumna Associations I and II, and a communicant at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Huntington. She devoted herself to many volunteer activities. She was a mental health Compeer at Birmingham Group, a cancer patient driver, music director for her daughter Barbara’s day care center, a Julia Day Nursery School driver, and a volunteer caregiver with the Fairfield AARP Widowed Persons Service, where she was recognized as their Volunteer of the Year in 2001.
The beloved matriarch of a large family, and sometimes known as the Queen Mother, she is mourned by her children, Linda Kosko and her husband Michael, Richard Mills and his wife Kathryn, Jean Mills Aranha, Barbara Fronterotta and her husband Bruno, and Robert Mills and his wife Deborah. Her son-in-law Ray Aranha, and her brothers Bernard and William Didsbury predeceased her. She will be missed by the grandchildren she adored: Nicole, Michael, Matthew, Jessica, Thomas, Marc, Delaine, Kailey, and Rebecca, and by her cherished great- grandchildren: Patrick, Margaret, Michael, Eleanor, Blake, Ruby, Kya, and Lainey. She also leaves her brother Robert Didsbury, sister-in-law of Trudy Didsbury, and several nieces and nephews.
Friends may greet her family on Thursday from 4 to 7 PM in the Riverview Funeral Home, 390 River Road in Shelton. On Friday her funeral procession will leave the funeral home at 10:15 AM for a Funeral Service at 11:00 AM in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in the Huntington Section of Shelton. Burial will follow in Riverside Cemetery Shelton.
At the request of her family, in lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to Connecticut Legal Services, 62 Washington Ave. Middletown, CT 06457, Columbus House, 586 Ella T. Grasso Blvd., New Haven, CT 06519, or Danbury Children First, 83 West St. Danbury, CT 06810.
Please offer online condolences to her family at www.riverviewfh.com
