Millie was a beloved wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and a friend to many. She had a keen intellect and a level of energy and stamina that belied her petite, barely five-foot frame.
Millie was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on Sept. 26, 1928. She was the granddaughter of Swedish immigrants. Her father's parents ran a Swedish restaurant in Minneapolis, and her mother's father was a contractor in Kansas City. Her father worked as a coffee salesman, calling on restaurants throughout the Midwest.
She attended Baker University, where she met her husband, Ralph Sellmeyer, a World War II veteran and fellow student who waited tables at her sorority house. They raised four daughters, living in Kansas and West Texas before retiring in Branson. In her late 30s, Millie returned to college at Texas Tech University to earn a bachelor's degree in history. She graduated with honors at age 43 in the same year that her oldest daughter earned her bachelor's degree. Millie later worked as a secretary for a justice of the peace and in the oil industry.
Millie was always protective of her children and those of others. She had a healthy sense of humor, but she was upset when a television program in the 1990s aired a sketch making fun of President Clinton's daughter Chelsea, who was an adolescent. Millie knew exactly how difficult it was to be a 13-year-old girl. She raised four of them.
Millie was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church, including 26 years at Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church in Branson, 20 years at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Lubbock, Texas, and her final years at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Houston. As a church member in Texas and Missouri, she taught Sunday school, helped raise money for charities, baked casseroles, served coffee, comforted the bereaved and rarely turned down a request to volunteer.
She loved to read aloud, and her daughters joked about being held captive on car trips as she read articles to their dad. She first read aloud as a small child for her grandmother's Swedish Lutheran women's group in Kansas City, and she liked to remind her daughters that she took expression lessons from the same instructor who taught actress Jean Harlow.
Although she never learned to swim and had a lifelong fear of the water, she took her daughters to swimming lessons every summer from the time they were very young. She knew she couldn't save them if they were stranded in deep water, and she wanted them to be able to do things she couldn't do.
As a mother of four and the wife of a college professor, Millie served as hostess, cook, baker, seamstress, chauffeur, Girl Scout leader and quartermaster general for the family.
Millie is preceded in death by her mother, Gladys Johnson Dahlstrom, who died when she was a small child; her father, Carl Dahlstrom; and her stepmother, Cornelia Dahlstrom. She is survived by her husband of almost 65 years, Ralph Louis Sellmeyer; her four daughters and their husbands, Melissa and Don McCoy, Susie and Richard Solomon, Sheri Sellmeyer and Barry Kolar, and Alison and David Hickey; her grandchildren, Amanda McCoy Gardner and her husband Shayne, Emily McCoy, Jonathan Solomon and his wife Amy, Katie Solomon Meredith and her husband Guy, and Christopher Hickey; and her great-grandchildren, Jackson and Charlie Gardner and Ben, Jack and Claire Solomon.
Family members and friends celebrated Millie’s life at a memorial service Feb. 1 at The Terrace retirement community in Houston. A March 29 church service took place in Branson.
Millie’s family requests that memorials be made to Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church, 107 Walnut Lane, Branson, Mo. 65616.
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