Three family members having birthdays close together is a great reason to have a reunion/party.
The event was held Saturday at the Holiday Inn Express in Pittsburg, drawing relatives from as far away as Wyoming.
- A family reunion was held Saturday in Pittsburg to celebrate the birthdays of, from left, Shari Pike, Wichita; her aunt, Frances Smith, Pittsburg; and her father, Harold Millard, Wichita. The Millard family, which lived many years in Monmouth, has a rich history that includes numerous patriots who served in the Revolutionary War. NIKKI PATRICK/THE MORNING SUN
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Three family members having birthdays close together is a great reason to have a reunion/party.
The event was held Saturday at the Holiday Inn Express in Pittsburg, drawing relatives from as far away as Wyoming.
Celebrants were Frances Millard Smith, Pittsburg, who turned 90 on March 30; her brother, Harold Millard, Wichita, who will be 80 on April 18; and his daughter, Shari Pike, Wichita, who turned 50 on March 26.
Millard family roots go deep in the area. Smith her brother and a sister, Lola Cleavinger, are the children of Leslie R. Millard and his wife, Leila M. Boore Millard, Monmouth. All the children were born in Monmouth and went to elementary school there, then attended high school in McCune.
“My father was a coal miner,” Millard said. “I think he started with the Lightning Creek Coal Company, and later went with Pittsburg & Midway.”
He said that his mother, at the age of 17, came to Pittsburg, took a summer course and earned teacher certification.
“She taught school, but had to quit when she got married,” Millard said. “In those days, married women could not teach school.”
He met his late wife while both were attending college in Pittsburg.
“We were in the same typing class,” Millard said. “I sat in front of her and could type faster than her at that point in time.”
He worked for the IRS for 30 years, as did his wife.
“We were gone from Kansas for 25 or 30 years,” Millard said. “We lived in Chicago, Cincinnati and Cleveland, but felt that pull from Kansas and came back.”
He volunteered, then worked for, the American Red Cross in disaster relief.
“If they had a disaster and needed me, I went,” he said. “I went as far west as Alaska and as far east as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. I also did mission work for my church and took mission teams across the world. We did construction, no evangelizing, and hit probably 50 countries.”
His wife died in August after spending three years in a nursing home.
His sister was a nurse, and Millard remembers attending her graduation in a movie theater.
“That was the first movie I attended,” he said. “I was sheltered.”
Her career inspired her daughter, Elizabeth Lavon Lanning, to become a nurse as well.
“After I retired from nursing I began doing genealogy,” said Lanning, who grew up in Pittsburg and now lives in Wyoming.
She believes she’s found 23 to 25 ancestors on her mother’s side of the family who fought in the American Revolutionary War.
“I’ve proven four of them through the Daughters of the American Revolution,” Lanning said.
Her mother is a member of Oceanus Hopkins Chapter, DAR, and Lanning returns to Pittsburg several times a year and takes her mother to DAR activities.
She finds her genealogy fascinating.
“Each person had a story, and when you look through the documents, they come to life,” Lanning said.
Her cousin Shari Pike didn’t grow up in Pittsburg, but said she had been visiting the community since she was a baby.
“I learned to steer a car on the back roads of Pittsburg and learned to fish with a cane pole in the strip pits,” she said. “Grandma cooked them in an iron skillet. I lived with my Aunt Frances during my last year of college.”
She came to Pittsburg State University and finished her social work degree in 1987. Pike is still a social worker in the child welfare system in Wichita.
Her aunt Lola Cleavinger also gave her a birthday party earlier.
“I wanted to do that,” her aunt said. “This was the first year since she’d lost her mother.”
Cleavinger said she was named for her grandmother.
“Grandma Lola was a strong-willed lady,” she said. “I spent a lot of time with her. “Her sister was Susie and she ran the depot and was divorced, which was very unusual at that time.”
Cleavinger said that she and her husband are do-gooders, and have tried to help at-risk youth. Things have changed since she, her brother and sister grew up in Monmouth with their parents and extended family and one of the big problems that she sees today is the lack of loving family bonds to guide youngsters to healthy adult lives.
“Everybody is so busy now and we don’t live close like we used to,” Cleavinger said. “Family is so important.”