Jean McMillan, ‘Bamfield girl,’ was MB matriarch, city clerk
Jean McMillan. Photo courtesy the McMillan family
Two chairs sit in the front lawn of a house at the corner of Palm and Marine, a spot that for 61 years served as Jean and Jim McMillan’s perch. It’s where they talked to neighbors, plotted their next adventure together, or simply relaxed at the end of a long day. It was also a place, along with the McMillan’s living room, that those in the political know paid frequent visits to seek counsel, and often approval, from the unofficial matriarch of Manhattan Beach.
“She would tell you if you didn’t have the makeup for it,” said Councilperson Richard Montgomery, who paid a visit to Jean before he ever ran for council. “She was a sounding board for all of us. But she was also like a grandmother.”
“It was a little bit like getting an audience,” said Brian McMillan, who as Jean’s son, grew up accustomed to such visits to the family home. “Of course, she would have never thought of it that way.”
Councilperson Steve Napolitano remembers visiting Jean the first time he ran for council, as a write-in candidate at the age of 24.
“She and her husband Jim were just so well respected in the community, and she was such a gentle soul, someone who never said a bad word about anybody,” Napolitano said. “There was always a smile on her face, and she always gave sage advice. The thing is, her advice was spot on — it was about what was best for everyone, how everybody could win.”
Jean McMillan passed away on June 8. She departed in the storybook fashion with which she lived — at home, surrounded by her five children, and her husband of nearly 65 years, Jim.
McMillan held countless titles over the years — city clerk (when it was still an elected position), PTA president (both at American Martyrs and Mira Costa), co-founder of the Cancer Support Community, board member for the South Bay Hospital District (now Beach Cities Health District) and Loyola Marymount University, and “Grand Dame” of Manhattan Beach’s Centennial celebrations in 2012. But in her heart, McMillan always remained a “Bamfield girl,” and her upbringing in the tiny, remote fishing village in British Columbia remained a big part of who she was all her life. Her indefatigable work ethic, fierce self-reliance, and down-home neighborliness all had roots in her childhood.
“They grow them strong there,” Brian McMillan said. “Don’t mess with a Bamfield girl.”
Jean McMillan with her father John on his fishing boat, the Lief, in British Columbia. Photo courtesy the McMillan family
Bamfield, population of 169, is located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, accessible by land only through a rugged logging road. In her formative years, McMillan came to understand the community wasn’t something that just happened, but rather something that had to be actively made, one connection at a time.
“She was a go-er,” said Napolitano. “That wilderness kind of self-reliance and sense of adventure and openness — she brought it here to Manhattan Beach.”
Her parents, John and Grunlund, were Swedes who’d emigrated separately and met in Canada. Her father was a fisherman, and her entire family grew up involved in the enterprise.
“Everybody in that community worked at something — even the women who weren’t going fishing would meet the boat at the end of the day,” Brian McMillan said. “Everybody had a job. My mom and her sister tended crab pots. They had a small boat they’d row out into the inlet to pick up the crab pots…. She was worked really hard because, from the beginning of life, that is how you made your life — you worked every day.”
She and her sister, Barbro, were inseparable.
“They were only 14 months apart,” said her daughter, Suzanne McMillen. “When it came time for Barb to go to first grade my mom was lonely so she went along to school with her sister and sat in the same desk. Finally, the teacher agreed that Jean might as well be in first grade, too. So, even though they were a year apart, there were always in school in the same grade.”
Her intellectual gifts might never have been discovered if a Canadian government official hadn’t shown up in Bamfield one day when she was 11 years old to administer IQ tests. When both girls tested well above average, the official suggested that the McMillans move across the inlet to Port Albion so they could continue their education — Bamfield didn’t have a high school. The family did so, and Jean excelled. By the time she was 20, she’d already graduated from the University of British Columbia. She then moved to California, where she obtained her master’s degree in Physical Chemistry from USC. It was during these years she found the love of her life, Jim McMillen, who was an undergraduate engineering student at USC. They met on a blind date.
“She didn’t know him and was being cautious so the story she always told was, ‘I had a little beaker of acid in my purse just in case,’” Brian McMillan recalled. “The 1952 equivalent of mace, I guess, for a chemistry student.”
They married the following year. Jean worked as a research chemist with the Canadian Atomic Energy Project and then taught at Immaculate Heart College while Jim worked his way through law school at UCLA. He would become a successful attorney, allowing her to focus her energies on raising their five children, and later, tending to the community. They built the house on Palm Street and moved there from Gardena in 1957 when Jim was working for McDonnell Douglas and they were about to have their third child. It was the beginning of another love affair, this one with the sleepy little beach town where they’d spend the next six decades happily ever after.
“They ended up just loving Manhattan Beach,” Brian McMillan said. “You couldn’t get them to leave Manhattan Beach for anything in the world. There was no place they wanted to be more than here.”
The McMillan house became a neighborhood hub. Surf historian Matt Warshaw, who grew up down the street, remembered Jean as “the warmest person I ever knew” on a recent Facebook post. He recalled what happened as an 18-year-old after he got in fight with his mother, stormed out, and walked three blocks to his buddy Dave McMillan’s house. Dave’s parents said he could stay — only years later would Warshaw learned that there had been “a quick, reassuring” phone call to his mother — and subsequently made him one of the family.
“It was a crucial point in my life — I graduated from high school while living with the McMillans — but all of a sudden I had a second family helping things along,” he wrote. “Some of the best moments of my two months living on Palm Ave. were spent in the company of Jean, who made sure I did my chores and showed up on time for school and dinner, but also lit up every conversation with laughter and stories and good cheer.”
“She was tough as nails, and fought for what she believed in, but never once did I see her snap at anybody or lash out,” Warshaw wrote. “Her good cheer was legendary, transferrable. If you got within 50 feet of her your mood improved.”
When the children got older, Jean turned her considerable attention on the community. She’d already become a force in the PTAs, but in the 70s she became very civically active, eventually serving one term as the City Clerk, from 1976 to 1980.
“I think it meant an opportunity to have a more formal role in our community,” said Brian McMillan.
Four of the five founders of The Wellness Community-South Bay Cities (now Cancer Support Community Redondo Beach), left to right, Elise Asch, Dr. Tom Simko, Anne Clary, and Jean McMillan. Not pictured is Joost van Adelsberg. Photo courtesy CSCRB
In 1987, she helped found the Cancer Support Community in Redondo Beach — which was the first such support community beyond the organization’s founding in Santa Monica. Jean had witnessed her sister and her good friend (and CSCRB co-founder) Elise Asch battle cancer, and the Support Community was in keeping with her way of doing things. Its mission was to provide social and emotional support not only those with cancer but their families, as well. There are now 46 such communities.
“She was always saying the three things she was most proud of in her life were marrying Jim, the five kids, and then starting the Wellness Community, which was our name before we became the Cancer Support Community in 2012,” said Judith Opdahl, Director Emerita, Planned Giving and Legacy Gifts and former, longtime executive director of the organization. “This was her real passion, and she was so proud of the growth we have had over the years.”
“It’s a big loss to so many because she had so many friends — anyone who met her would never forget her smile, and how kind and caring she was to everybody…. She really had a way of making you feel you were the most important person in the room, but it was really her.”
“I am proud to continue the work that Jean McMillan and the other co-founders began more than 30 years ago,” said CSCRB Executive Director and CEO Paula Moore. “Jean’s passion to make a difference in the lives of cancer patients and their families is a legacy that lives on at CSCRB every day. She left an indelible mark on the South Bay community and will be greatly missed.”
She was likewise instrumental in transforming the Beach Cities Health District into the broad community organization it has become.
“The social services safety net we are so lucky to have in the South Bay would not have been possible without Jean McMillen,” said BCHD board member Vanessa Poster. “We are blessed to have known her. She will be missed.”
Jean and Jim would have celebrated their 65th anniversary on June 27. Their marriage was as solid and loving in their last years together has it had been when they were newlyweds.
“They were great partners,” said Brian McMillan. “They matched each other well. They were really good at understanding what the other wanted and needed. They had been together so long, and were so close.”
Jim may have been less civically involved, but he shared the same community ethos. Napolitano recalled that after he passed the bar to become an attorney, Jim gave him a present — his first briefcase as a lawyer.
“I mean, who does that?” Napolitano said. “It was like, ‘Let’s get you started off on the right foot.’ Just wow.”
In Jean’s role as unofficial town matriarch, she and some friends founded the informal organization they called the Manhattan Mamas.
“It was this amazing group of women who had for years focused on politics in Manhattan Beach and decided which candidate would best serve the community,” said Joyce Fahey, former mayor, and councilwoman. “They were very well known. They held coffee and information sessions, and they were really quite remarkable — each was very well educated, very involved, had raised children in this community and were dedicated to the goals of Manhattan Beach. And Jean was the leader of that.”
After Fahey was elected, McMillan took it upon herself not only to mentor her but look after her family.
“She was the kind of person everyone aspires to be but few of us ever are,” Fahey said. “She would make a point of feeding my family those nights she knew I’d be away from home — she’d bring by a pot of soup or stew from my husband and daughter. I have never met anyone like her. She was like a mother and grandmother to all of us…. After she raised her own kids, she really wanted to help raise all of us. And she did. She always thought of others, and could always find a way to help.”
McMillan was also a legendary cook. Her care packages were seriously coveted by those who knew her and usually included some of her famous smoked salmon. She traveled north to her home waters at least once a year to fish and built her own smoker at the family home on Palm.
“My mom was a believer you could connect people with food and you could cure any kind of ailment with food,” Brian McMillan said. “She was a feeder in the best sense of the word. She loved to share that with people.”
She continued her fishing trips to her native waters every summer well into her 80s. “It was like her fountain of youth,” said Brian.
Her son remembers that when she arrived on the charter boat on one of those last trips, the skipper was dubious of taking out this somewhat wizened senior citizen, but somewhat reluctantly told Suzanne McMillen that he’d look after her mother. On board, the skipper was worked his way around the boat, helping people set up their rods and reels.
“By the time he got to her, she already had her line in the water,” Brian McMillan said. “She was probably fighting a salmon already. The guy ended up a couple days later posting on Facebook about this incredible woman he’d fished with. She was a Bamfield girl. She was a pro.”
On her last fishing trip, at age 88, she and her nephew Jim caught 250 pounds of salmon. “In the photo, it looks like they robbed the seafood market in Seattle and took the 20 best salmon,” Brian said.
The City Council adjourned its meeting late Tuesday night in memory of Jean. Mayor Amy Howorth said she first met Jean when she ran for council and was immediately struck.
“I was just so impressed by the breadth and depth of these two people, Jim and Jean,” Howorth said. “Her knowledge of and dedication to this community, her involvement in the American Martyrs community, her love for her children, her love of this community — I was just so honored to have the endorsement of that fine woman, to have her take a risk on me.”
Councilperson David Lesser praised Jean’s “indomitable spirit and dedication to community…. I remember sitting in their living room discussing core values and it would end up with discussions of Jean’s love of fishing and Canada, where she came from,” Lesser said.
After a moment of silence and a gavel ended the meeting, Howorth quietly dedicated the council’s work to her old friend.
“May we do good work for Jean,” she said.
“She was so woven into the fabric of our community,” said Napolitano in an interview. “I just encourage people, be more like Jean. I know everyone is busy in their daily lives, but she was certainly busy with the kids and the city and everyone else’s kids, but she always made time for everything and everybody. She didn’t limit herself to her front yard and her house — she made the community her front yard, her living room.”
Jean McMillan is survived by her husband, Jim, and her children, Suzanne, Brian (Caroline), David (Mary), Kiki (Anne), and Mary (Paul). She is also survived by four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. A Celebration of Jean’s life will be held Saturday, June 30, at 12 noon at American Martyrs Church. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Cancer Support Community Redondo Beach.