Born, April 17, 1937 in Mountainview, Missouri. It is a very small town in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks. Parents were Bernard Mills and Elizabeth Rosella Williams. Roy lived his first six years of life there in the Ozarks and started the first grade of school in a small one room school, where 1st through 8th grades were taught by one single teacher. Any further education meant moving away from home to a remote location like many young people do for college.

Then came the big day, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor and the start of World War II. This one day changed Roy’s life from the life of a poverty stricken existence, to the life that you are familiar with now. The Mills family loaded their meager possessions in an old model A Ford Truck. The result was almost a duplicate of the truck and scene used on the television show the Beverly Hillbillies. Only, instead of heading to Beverly Hills, California, with millions of dollars in their pockets, they set out with about $60 dollars in their pockets to find work in the defense plants in Seattle, Washington. Bernard found work in the ship yards building battleships and Elizabeth worked for Boing Aircraft Company building B-29 bombers. At the end of the war when the defense work ended, the Mills family relocated to the Layton Utah area. Roy was now 10 years old at this time. Bernard was suffering from the results of many years of high blood pressure and the problems related to Hypertension. He passed away, six years later on March 10, 1954.

Roy was now 16 years old and living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Roy was attending South High School at this time, dropped out of school and started working to earn a living. He worked as a gas station attendant, then found a job in Ogden, driving a 10 wheel dump truck hauling sand and gravel for Holley Ready Mix Cement Company. One year later opportunity knocked. His older brother Loyd who also worked for the ready mix cement department as a driver decided to quit truck driving and go into the cement finishing contracting business. It surprised Roy when the manager of the cement company asked him if he would like to have a try at driving the big 60,000 pound cement truck that his brother had previously driven. Roy drove cement trucks for four years.

He met Charlene Stephens, a young girl from Ogden, Utah. On December 29, 1956, they were married in Ely Nevada. A promise was made at this time by Roy that he would join the Church and they would be sealed in the temple. A promise that was 31 years later on June 6, 1987. Four children resulted from this marriage; Gary, Cheryl, Allen and Ronald.

During the same time that Roy was driving cement truck, he discovered airplanes and the love of flying. One of the other older drivers owned a small two place airplane. Arden who owned the airplane agreed to teach him to fly. Four months and 42 hours of flying time later, he was a licensed pilot. One day when Arden and Roy was flying, Arden asked if it was okay if he did a few acrobatic maneuvers. After a few loops and lazy eights, he was addicted to aerobatic flying. After all the instruction on aerobatics that Arden could give, he then proceeded on his own. Many hours were spent in the practice flying area around Little Mountain Utah. Arden did not worry about the aerobatic practice, where the plane being used was built with a high level of stress resistance. However, Roy proved him wrong one day when he brought the plane back and there was a full length stress crack down the middle of the windshield. After paying for the windshield and a stress examination of the airplane, he was asked to buy his own airplane. During the next few years, he bought and sold five different airplanes. He won the flour bomb drop contest and short field take off competition at the Brigham City airport fly in Centennial Celebration in 1962. After about 2000 hours of every conceivable type of flying, such as flying for the Ogden squadron of the Civil Air Patrol, cross country and coyote hunting. He lost interest in flying and went on to other hobbies.

After driving cement trucks for a few years, he went into carpentry and cement finishing. He was a union Journeyman Carpenter at one time and was employed by Thiokol Chemical Company, building the rocket test facility west of Brigham City, Utah. While working for himself contracting cement work that a life changing decision was made. One day in the middle of August he was pouring the cement on a large driveway by himself. While being hot, tired and physically exhausted, but knowing he dared not stop for a minute to rest or the cement he was pouring would get too hard to finish and have to be broken out at great expense to him. He made the decision to go back to school to further his education.

He first attended night school for two years to finish his high school education, then attended the Salt Lake school of electronics for 1500 class room hours at night, while working full time days, cement finishing and carpentry work. Graduating with high honors, he then went to work for the Ogden City Schools educational television system as a transmitter operator. After seven years, he became the new Chief Engineer of the Ogden City School Educational TV system.

The next career change in life was to work for Utah Power and Light Company in Idaho Falls, Idaho. After 17 years, four worn out trucks, 1/2 million miles of driving throughout the valley, he asked for medical retirement from his job as area Electronic Maintenance Foreman in the North Idaho Region of Utah Power and Light Company. He passed away from Cancer a few weeks later on June 27, 1987.

Written by Roy in 1987, edited by Gary Mills.