William Milliken

William Grawn Milliken, Sr.
44th Governor of Michigan
In office January 22, 1969 – January 1, 1983
Preceded by	George Romney
Succeeded by	James Blanchard
Chairman of the National Governors Association
In office September 9, 1977 – August 29, 1978
Preceded by	Reubin Askew
Succeeded by	Julian Carroll (Kentucky)
54th Lieutenant Governor of Michigan
In office January 1, 1965 – January 22, 1969
Preceded by	T. John Lesinski
Succeeded by	Thomas F. Schweigert (acting)
Michigan State Senator for District 27
In office January 1, 1961 – December 31, 1964
Preceded by	John Minnema
Succeeded by	William Romano
Born	March 26, 1922 Traverse City, Michigan.
Died	October 18, 2019 (aged 97) Traverse City, Michigan
Resting place	Protestant Cemetery on Mackinac Island
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Helen Margaret Wallbank Milliken (married 1945-2012, her death)
Children	William Milliken, Jr. Elaine Wallbank Milliken (deceased) Parents: James Thacker and Hildegarde Mary Grawn Milliken Grandparents: William Wheelock and Callie Thacker Milliken
Alma mater	Traverse City Senior High School Yale University (BA) (Connecticut)
Military Service
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1942–1945
Unit	Hap Arnold Wings of the U. S. Army Air Corps
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Purple Heart and Air Medal

William Grawn Milliken, Sr., also known as Bill Milliken (March 26, 1922 – October 18, 2019), was the 44th governor and the 54th lieutenant governor of his home sate of Michigan. A Republican, he is he is the longest-serving governor in the history of his state. He succeeded to the governorship in 1969 when George Romney, his fellow Moderate Republican, resigned to become the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the new administration of Richard M. Nixon. Milliken was elected to full gubernatorial terms as a Republican in the heavily Democratic years of 1970, 1974, and 1978. In 1992, a ballot initiative was approved to limit the governor to two four-year terms, like the United States Constitution authorizes for the President. Therefore, no one can top Milliken's record for longevity as governor of Michigan.

During the Milliken administration, the Michigan economy declined because of the surge in Japanese auto imports and restructuring in the automobile industry. Not only were jobs lost, but the population of Detroit, once the fourth largest city in the nation, declined precipitously particularly after the 1967 riots. Milliken pushed to implement environmental protection and conservation of natural resources.

Background

Milliken was born in Traverse City, Michigan. His father, James Thacker Milliken (1882-1952), was a mayor of Traverse City from 1923 to 1929 and a state senator for District 27 from 1941 to 1950. His mother, the former Hildegarde Mary Grawn (1883-1950) (hence his middle name), married his father in 1912. She served on the Traverse City School Board, having been the first woman elected to public office in the city. Milliken's grandfather, James Wheelock Milliken (1848-1908), a Danish-American, served from 1898 to 1900 as the District 27 state senator.

Milliken graduated from what is now Traverse City Senior High School and then entered Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, but his studies were interrupted in 1942 when he joined the United States Army Air Corps, the forerunner of the United States Air Force. Milliken flew fifty combat missions on a B-24 bomber in World War II. He survived two crash landings. He received seven military honors, including the Purple Heart and Air Medal.

The Millikens married a month after his discharge from the Army. The following spring, Milliken graduated from Yale, and the couple returned to Traverse City, where he was named president of J. W. Milliken, Inc., a department store founded by his grandfather and later run by his father. They had two children, Elaine Wallbank Milliken (1948-1993), a feminist attorney who died of cancer, and their son, William Milliken, Jr (born 1946), a real estate owner in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Helen Milliken died of ovarian cancer at the age of eighty-nine on November 16, 2012, at their Traverse City residence.

Political career

In 1947, Governor Kimber Cornelius "Kim" Sigler (1894-1953) named Milliken to the Michigan Waterways Commission. In 1960, Milliken was elected as a state senator from the 27th District, which his grandfather and father had earlier represented. He served in the position from 1961 to 1964. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1964, despite the repudiation of his party's nominee, Barry Goldwater. He served under Governor Romney from 1965 to 1969. He succeeded to the position of governor after Romney resigned to join the Nixon Cabinet. He was a Moderate Republican cast in the mold with Nelson Rockefeller, who as governor of New York also served for fourteen years in his position.

In presidential elections since 2004, Miliken expressed support for several Democratic nominees. In 2004, he endorsed then U.S. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in his strong but losing bid to unseat George W. Bush, of whom Milliken said did "not speak for me or for many other Moderate Republicans on a very broad cross section of issues." Kerry won the electoral votes of Michigan. In 2008, he first endorsed Moderate Republican John McCain of Arizona but began criticizing the party nominee during the campaign opposit African-American Democrat Barack Hussein Obama, then a U.S. Senator from Illinois. Milliken even claimed that he GOP was "moving toward rigidity, and I don't like that. I think Gerald Ford (the former U.S. Representative from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who was the U.S. President from 1974 to 1977) would hold generally the same view I'm holding on the direction of the Republican Party." Among McCain's opponents for the nomination was former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, later elected in 2018 as the junior U. S. Senator from Utah. Milliken, who had been George Romney's closest political ally, declined to support Mitt Romney, whom he considered "too conservative."

In August 2016, Milliken announced support for another Democrat, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her unsuccessful race against businessman Donald Trump, who won Michigan in his first presidential campaign. Milliken charged that Trump did not "represent Republican ideals."

In 2015, Milliken at the age of ninety-three endorsed gay marriage in an amicus curiae brief filed with the United States Supreme Court.

After retiring from public office, Milliken returned to Traverse City and was named to the board of the Chrysler Corporation and also chaired the Center for the Great Lakes, a research center.

Death

Milliken died at the age of ninety-seven at his Traverse City home after years of declining health. On August 6, 2020, his memorial service was held in the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen in Grand Traverse County. He is interred, along with his wife and daughter at the Protestant Cemetery on Mackinac Island in Macinac County, Michigan.

Recognition

• In 1976, Governor Milliken received an honorary Doctor of Laws from his alma mater, Yale University.
• In 2006 Dave Dempsey published through the University of Michigan Press a biography of Milliken entitled, William G. Milliken: Michigan's Passionate Moderate ISBN|0472033638}}/ISBN 978-0472033638)
• The William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor on the Detroit riverfront is named in his honor