Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Eddie Mills, St. Petersburg Democratic Party activist, dies at 79

Early edition: Mr. Mills was a small-business champion who once sought a seat in the Legislature.

By CRAIG BASSE
Published November 11, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG -- Eddie L. Mills, an optician and Democratic Party activist, has died at age 79. Mr. Mills, a small-business champion who once sought a seat in the Legislature, died Thursday (Nov. 9, 2006) at Kindred Hospital.

A resident since 1957, Mr. Mills managed the optical department at the old Webb’s City for nine years before striking out on his own in 1969 with Mills-Anderson Opticians in St. Petersburg.

By 1980, his business had grown enough to open a third office at 7673 Starkey Road N, Seminole, joining those at 839 Dr. M. L. King (Ninth) St. N and 1206 Pasadena Ave. S.

In 1978, Mr. Mills, a member of the Downtown Improvement Authority, made his bid for a seat in the Florida House, hoping to succeed Rep. Don Poindexter, a Democrat who stepped down to run for Congress.

When Mr. Mills came here from Georgia, he was a Democrat. He joined the Republicans in 1970 and as a member of the GOP served as Poindexter’s assistant campaign manager in 1976. Before announcing for Poindexter’s seat representing south Pinellas County, he returned to the Democratic Party, saying it made him feel “more comfortable.”

Mr. Mills, the chairman of a committee working on a student conduct code, campaigned on a platform of increased state spending for schools. A board member of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce, he vowed to boost the cause of small businessmen.

“The small businessman has taken a back seat for a long, long time,” Mr. Mills asserted. “The little guy, the guy on the street, doesn’t have anyone speaking for him.”

Unopposed in the Democratic primary, Mr. Mills, the optician, ran against Republican Dr. Robert E. “Bob” Melby, an optometrist, in the general election. Melby won.

The following year, Mr. Mills was named campaign chairman for the Pinellas County Democratic Party.

In 1986, Mr. Mills, who had led the chamber’s Small Business Council, took a Florida delegation to Washington for the second White House Conference on Small Business. The trip marked an expansion beyond Mr. Mills’ St. Petersburg office of a war he had waged on behalf of small businesses for decades.

He could point to his own troubles with government: He once was fined by the Internal Revenue Service for not depositing payroll taxes on time.

“I had broken a rule I was totally unaware of,” Mr. Mills recalled on the eve of the Washington conference.
He successfully fought the fine, arguing that his small business could not afford a full-time accountant to monitor changing laws.

An Alabama native, Mr. Mills moved to Albany, Ga., in 1942. After high school, he attended a business school and enlisted in the Navy in July 1944. He served in the Pacific Theater with the 3rd Fleet. He returned to Albany and entered the optical business.

Over the years, Mr. Mills’ activism led him to serve on a committee of the United Way of Pinellas County, the city Mass Transit Committee, the chamber’s Education Committee and the Florida Society to Prevent Blindness.
He was a former member of the Florida Board of Dispensing Opticians.

Mr. Mills is survived by his daughters, Toni Clayton, Kennesaw, Ga., Jeri Hubbard, Tallahassee, and Marla Hicks, St. Petersburg, sisters, Annie Frank Armstrong, Mary Parker, and Ree Howe, and grandsons, Thomas, Isaac and Michael.

Arrangements handled by National Cremation Society, Clearwater.

-- Some information in this obituary came from stories by Glenn Burkins and William Nottingham in the Times and from stories in the St. Petersburg Evening Independent.
 

[Last modified November 11, 2006, 14:56:30]