Memories of Charles Mills

A memorable story about coach Mills

Mr. Mills, as I called him, was my soccer coach for the Brentwood Free Spirits back in the early 1980s. While this is the first puplic comment I am writing about Mr. Mills, I have been repeating this particular personal story about Mr. Mills for many years, even before his tragic death.

Before I tell the story, I just want to reach back into my earliest feelings about Mr. Mills. Even from the time of about 9 and 10 years old, when I played for Mr Mills, I always had a feeling of comfort around him. He was a man of pure good and you can feel his love whenever you were in his presence.

I was always a shy child -- a standoffish child. I never had confidence. Mr. Mills, I think, sensed it. Whether at practice, or at games, or by chance run-ins at random places around Brentwood, he always gave me a sense of comfort. A sense that he knew my discomfort and that he extended himself to make me feel positive and appreciated.

There was always something about being around him that made you feel welcomed and whole ... comfortable, as if being in his presense is what life was supposed to feel like ... loved without reason. Pureness I don't think I have experienced since.

Getting to the personal story, it was a Brentwood soccer tournament. I don't know if it was a memeorial tournament or a Columbus Day

tournament. But, it was one of the two tournaments that were nomally held in Brentwood. To this day, I can probably stand in the spot where it happened.

Here is the story:

We were ahead by one goal. In a scramble after a corner kick with about two minutes left in the game, the ball was kicked over my head from about 12 yards out as I stood about two yards from my own goal. It was assuredly headed into our own net as my goalie was on the far side of the goal, so he had no chance to save it. By pure reaction I turned around a made a bicycle kick (scissor kick) to save the ball from entering our goal within about one foot.

Our goalie, John Boehm, said, "Nice!" as I was getting up. Two minutes later the game was over and we had won the game. I went to my mother to ask if she had seen my play.

She said she didn't see it because there had been too many people around during the play. I asked a few other people and none of them had seen it. I was about 9 or 10 years old and, to me, it was devastating. I started crying.

Well, Mr. Mills had seen me crying and he came over to see what was wrong. After I told him that nobody had seen the great play that I made, while I was completely sobbing, Mr. Mills looked at me with that same comforting look, that same warm look that had always made me feel that he understood. He reached in his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, opened it up, wiped one tear from my left cheek with the gentle stroke of his forefinger, carried my tear carefully into his wallet with his fore finger as I watched intensely, and he said "This tear is going to be worth money some day."

I said, "What?" He repeated the statement. In that moment, I stopped crying and listened. I stopped crying and felt appreciated. In that moment, I felt that I was going to be something.

That was the ability that Mr. Mills had. To take a moment in time that could easily be forgoten and make it a moment that not only lasts for ever, but a moment that becomes generational.

I wish that I can shake Mr. Mill's hand and tell him how much I appreciated that moment, but somehow I think he knows. I hope that the Mills

family will read this to recognize what he meant to me and so many others in such a short moment in time, but I bet they already know as he touched so many lives in the same way.

I think it was Jackie Robinson who once said, and I paraphrase, "A life has no significance except for the impact it has on other lives!"
From the comments I read in this post and many others, Mr. Mills's life has impacted the lives of many and will carry on with the same positive influence that he carried in his every day life.

I am now a soccer coach for my son's team for the same club that I played for under coach Mills. I don't live in Brentwood anymore but wanted to carry on the same tradition that was taught to me by coach Mills ... love, happiness and positivity. I will share that moment in time I had with coach Mills with my son when the time is right.

I wish peace, love and happiness to the Mills family. Especially, my teammate Charles Mills Jr. and the team mother, Mrs. Mai Mills.

God bless you all,

Fernando Radillo, Holbrook

Co-worker: 'Always a gentleman'

I had the honor and pleasure of working with Charlie Mills on the NYC Transit Police Department. Charlie worked in headquarters while I was in the operations unit in the late '60s. Later on in the mid '70s, when Charlie was a captain on supervisory patrol and I was on uniformed patrol, we met once again. Unfortunately, Charlie had to give me a "complaint" for being off post and leaving early after my train patrol run, despite the fact the CO gave us the OK while I was the transit PBA area trustee.

Charlie was always a gentleman in all respects and we, as retirees of the NYC Transit Police Department, will miss him and never forget his and other police and fire officers and all first responders who gave their lives on that terrible day in our country's history.
 

Anthony Lomanto, Oceanside