Mildred Viola Todd

Mildred Viola Todd, 92 years old passed away Saturday afternoon, September 30. A memorial service will be held at the Stumpff Funeral Home, Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 2:00 pm with Reverend Kevin Tully officiating. She was born October 3, 1924 at 14th and Virginia, which was known as “Starvation Corner” to Fred and Mable Reed Todd. She attended Horace Mann Elementary School, Central Junior High and College High School, graduating with the class of 1942. She married Harold Albert Todd (no relation) on July 3, 1941. While her husband was off fighting in WWII in Europe, she worked as a telephone operator in Bartlesville in the Pioneer Building. She and Harold had three children, Mary Ann, Thomas Leroy and Joe Lee. They owned and operated Todd’s Salvage on West 14th Street from 1952 until 1980. She wrote the book, “Starvation Corner” about her life with her family during the Great Depression in Bartlesville and was named the Women’s Network Historian of the Year. In the book she talked about her parents, her father serving in WWI in Siberia and working in the garden and tending the animals and raising her children while her husband was off to war. She was a housewife and mother and when her children were gown she went through the Bartlesville Beauty College. Milly, as she was known, was a hair dresser in Bartlesville until she was employed by the Downtown Union Bank where she cooked for the bank employees. After she retired she worked as a volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club and later as a volunteer for the Washington-Nowata County Senior Nutrition Center for thirty years. She had a lifetime hobby of painting and completed numerous landscape paintings over the years and gave them to her many friends. She was told she could sell her paintings and make money but she preferred to give them as gifts. She was a member of Labadie Heights Baptist Church and attended regularly. Besides being a wife and mother, she was a Sunday School teacher and seamstress, making many of her own clothes. She was an author and enjoyed meeting and talking to people. She also loved to cook and made jellies and relishes and gave them to her friends. She loved everyone and everyone loved her and she would go out of her way to help anyone. During Desert Storm, her son, Joe wrote that the Iraqi military had destroyed the church in the Christian village of Kani Masi in Northern Iraq. Money was being raised by the American soldiers to help rebuild the church and she took it upon herself to raise money and sent it to her son to help in rebuilding the church. The priest at the church asked for her photo and now it hangs in the rebuilt Kani Masi Church. After collecting money for the church, she collected medical supplies which were sent to her son in Northern Iraq and were used for the Kurds in Northern Iraq who had been injured by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army. She is survived two sons, Tom and Joe, her sister, Mary, five grandchildren, three great grandchildren, and one great-great grandson. She was preceded in death by her parents, one brother, Jack Todd, her husband, Harold and her daughter, Mary Ann. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Todd Family Scholarship at Bartlesville High School. The scholarship was set up by her to be awarded to the student that does the best interview of a local veteran. The address of the scholarship is: Sondra Henderson, Bartlesville High School Administration Center, 1100 S. Jennings, Bartlesville, OK, 74003.

Mildred Viola Todd

October 3, 1924 - September 30, 2017