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Son of parents of Dutch extraction who, in the early part of the last century, pioneered from the State of New York, <em>John Millis</em> was born, on a Michigan farm, close to midnight, on December 31st, 1858, and lived more than 93 years. This venerable age was emphasized when, accompanied by his daughter, he attended the seventieth reunion of his class at the Academy, and, as the Oldest Graduate present led the “Long Gray Line” at the ceremonies on June 4th, 1951. He stood erect and firm, and walked with vigor; but his strength was already failing. He died at Cleveland, Ohio, on March 20, 1952, as the result of a concussion suffered in a fall on a stairway.</p>
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Colonel Millis entered the Academy in June 1877, and was graduated in June 1881, at the head of his class. While at the Academy he was Cadet Corporal, First Corporal, Sergeant, and finally Cadet Captain in First Class year, all in the company to which he was first assigned. His name was published in the annual Army Register as one of the five “distinguished cadets” of the class each year while he was at the Academy, in accordance with the regulation adopted in 1818. Among the five were Colonels Gaillard and Sibert, of Panama Canal fame. He was President of the Class of 1881.</p>
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In November 1883, after service with the Engineer School at Willetts Point, N. Y., he was assigned as Assistant to the Lighthouse Engineer of the Third, or New York District, with station on Staten Island. The duty was at first principally in connection with experimental work on the use of electric light for lighthouse purposes. He tested and supervised the installation of the electric plant for lighting the passage through Hell Gate, in New York Harbor, in 1884-5, where the removal of rock to improve the channel at this dangerous point was then in progress.</p>
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In 1886 Lieutenant Millis prepared the project for illuminating Bartholdi’s “Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World” which had been recently erected on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor. In their acceptance of the project, Generals Duane and Abbot of the Engineers, characterized it as “the best which can be adopted under the circumstances”. At that time the whole country was thrilled and excited by this statue, a magnificent gift from the Republic of France to the people of the United States of America.</p>
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While on duty on Staten Island, the young Lieutenant devised a system of electric buoys in conjunction with Lieutenant-Commander M. R. S. Mackenzie of the Navy for marking Gedney’s Channel, then the main entrance to New York Harbor. These buoys were successfully installed in November 1889, and were the first of the kind ever put in operation. The system was afterwards extended, and it was adopted for marking the channel leading to the grounds of the World’s Fair at Chicago.</p>
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After a visit to England and France on leave of absence in the summer of 1890, Lieutenant Millis was relieved from lighthouse duty and ordered to take charge of the Fourth District, Mississippi River, with station at New Orleans, being one of the youngest men in the Corps to be given a station of this importance. The district comprised 480 miles of the river, extending from Warrenton, just below Vicksburg, to the Head of the Passes below New Orleans, and its engineer was assigned as member of the Board on building and repairing levees for the whole river below the mouth of the Ohio. Even at that early date he perceived that the problem was to relieve the pressure upon the levees by providing an outlet for flood waters rather than to continue futilely to elevate the levee level. He wrote and spoke along this line, but the time for such action was not then. The young officer’s proposal was not realized until the completion, in 1938, of the Bonnet Carrs Spillway which now protects New Orleans from devastation by diverting flood waters into Lake Ponchartrain, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
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Lieutenant Millis received his Captaincy in 1892. In that same year he received the formal thanks of the people of Louisiana, by resolution of Senate and House of Representatives at the regular session of the General Assembly, “for individual efforts and energy in rendering timely aid during recent flood in the Mississippi River, which reached a higher elevation than ever known previously”.</p>
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In October 1894, he was relieved from duty at New Orleans, and ordered to Washington as member and Engineer Secretary of the Lighthouse Board. This position was virtually that of chief executive engineer of the United States Lighthouse Service. During his four years’ service in this capacity many new light stations were constructed in various parts of the country, and a general overhauling and improvement of the lighting and fog signal apparatus throughout the country was inaugurated.</p>
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Upon completing the four-year term on the Lighthouse Board, Captain Millis had a short tour of duty with the Battalion of Engineers at Willetts Point. It is interesting to note that in March 1899, he was sent to Cuba, under orders of the Paymaster of the United States Army, in command of a detachment of Engineer officers and soldiers, as guard for three million dollars in coin to pay off the Cuban army.</p>
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He received his promotion to Major of Engineers in April 1900; and in June went to Europe under orders of the War Department as National Delegate from the United States to the International Congresses of Navigation, of Electricity, and of Physics, held in Paris in connection with the International Exposition. He made the closing address on behalf of the U.S. Delegation at the final general session of the congress.</p>
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From Paris he went to Egypt to study the great dam at Assuan, a world novelty, then under construction, attracting both scientific and popular attention by the fact that its building involved the total submersion of one of the oldest temples of the world.</p>
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Returning from abroad, Major Millis was ordered to take charge of the Seattle Engineer District, which included, besides extensive river and harbor improvement, the entire fortification construction on Puget Sound; the Lake Washington ship canal; and surveys and construction of roads on Mt. Ranier, in Alaska.</p>
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In September 1905, he was ordered to Manila in the Philippine Islands to take charge of all fortification construction in the Islands, including the works on Corregidor. Major Millis took his family with him to the Orient; and the two year tour of duty was filled with satisfying constructive work; with agreeable adventures; and an immense broadening of outlook. His office headquarters were in Manila, within the ancient walls of the old Spanish city, in the building called Maestranza, which had been used by the Spaniards for the same purpose.</p>
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At that time the vivid historical events were the tales of Admiral Dewey’s warships sailing into Manila Bay, and the quiet “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley”; and our “glorious victory” over the forlorn hulks of the Spanish fleet. In the thinking of the gay young officers and their wives, those grim fortifications building on the steep slopes of Corregidor seemed reminiscences of the past, incongruous in the gentle, smiling present. And all unknown, happily, was the terrible reality of a savage future when the United States Army was to suffer a bitter defeat, and Corregidor’s defenders were to undergo torture, death and slavery. Unforgettable were those experiences of life in the tropics, among a subject people. As they recalled their Kipling, the American “conquerors” felt they were living in the pages of an English novel.</p>
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After the Orient, for Colonel Millis there came river and harbor work at Cleveland, Ohio; Providence, R.I.; Savannah, GA.; and Chicago. Up and down the Atlantic coast line, and along the American shore of the Great Lakes, he labored, always absorbed with plans for promoting national welfare and security, his active mind busied with constructive ideas and scientific speculations. He reached retirement age in 1922. Thereafter he lived quietly in Cleveland, devoting himself to scientific theories and research, and publishing many pamphlets upon these subjects.</p>
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Colonel Millis was a shy, retiring man, of an extraordinary sensitive disposition, which he concealed behind a reserved and rather cold demeanor. He was more absorbed in mathematics and other scientific abstractions than in the world of men and women; and, by temperament, more of a scientist than a soldier.</p>
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He held membership in many societies, of which the most outstanding are; American Society of Civil Engineers; American Institute of Electrical Engineers; United States Military Service Institution; United States Naval Institute; American Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he was elected a Fellow in 1908; and the National Geographic Society.</p>
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He was a member of many clubs, among them being: the University Club of N.Y.; the Bankers Club of America. N.Y.; the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C.; and the Army and Navy Club, Washington.</p>
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On November 22nd, 1893 he married, in Atlanta, Georgia, Mary, the daughter of William G. Raoul of Louisiana, once a Captain in the Confederacy, and at that time President of the Mexican National Railroad. Their children are: Ralph, at the time of his death in 1938, a Major of the Corps of Engineers; Walter, since many years a member of the editorial staff of the <em>New York Herald-Tribune</em>; and Janet, a graduate of the Dramatic School of Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, now Mrs. Norman J. Dicken, of El Paso, Texas.</p>
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<em>—M. R. M.</em></p>
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