IN THE SPOTLIGHT: From 4-H to playground builder, volunteer
When it comes to getting thing organized and getting them done, few people can outshine Gloria Mitchell. She is small in stature, but has a way about her that gets big things accomplished. Love is a key ingredient of her success.
“I’ve done many fundraisers and I’ve been treasurer of many organizations. I love numbers. But I also love to cook. I love to can; I love to bake; I love to garden; and I really enjoy people,” she said. “I’m an organized person and I enjoy leading – that is, I like to empower people to do things they didn’t know they could do. Getting new people to participate in a project, that is what I like to do.”
Gloria, herself, may be the best model for doing things she never thought she could do. She grew up on a farm in rural Michigan. Her parents never went to college, but expected – maybe insisted – their two daughters would be college educated. Being a nurse or a teacher were the expected paths for young women, so Gloria, loving numbers even at a young age, decided to be a math teacher.
Before that came to pass, Gloria enjoyed her time living on the farm.
“I remember when my mother sewed all my clothes,” she said. “I was in 4-H, and I learned so much. I learned my love for cooking and baking there. I was a state cherry pie champion once. It gave me a good background for so many things: leadership, and others. I just loved being on the farm, I sold animals at the fair.”
Eventually, she started classes at Michigan State University. She was on the path to doing what was expected. Then some friends fixed her up on a blind date. She was already engaged, but a free dinner seemed like a great idea to a dorm-bound college girl, so she accepted. Her date was John Mitchell, a college graduate, working at a nearby funeral home. He was also engaged to someone, so both of them were expecting this to be a one-off thing. The blind date went well, and over the next three weeks they saw each other every night. At the end of the three weeks, John asked her to marry him.
Gloria demurred, feeling it was too soon to make such a move – but not shutting him down completely. They continued seeing one another. Three months later he asked again, and she said, “Yes!”
They waited a year to actually marry. John went off to mortuary school, and Gloria saw him only four times that whole year. Still, the match was set and the wedding finally took place. That was 58 years ago, and the love between them is obvious.
Gloria did become a teacher, but only for a short time. It was not long before Gloria saw a need to work more closely with him, and she took on the role of a grief counselor. It was something she was not sure she could do, but once she decided to try this new role she found she was good at it and loved doing it. “I dearly loved that. I was able to help people, even some of our best friends, during a very difficult time in their lives,” she said.
They bought their first funeral home in 1981 in Chelsea, Michigan, a small town near Ann Arbor. When they are not in Boca Grande, that is where they still live. Along the way they bought a second funeral home and were highly successful. Today their two sons own the funeral homes and have continued the legacy. A grandson is also studying mortuary science and plans to continue the tradition. Their daughter, Amy, followed a different path. She is a director of Microsoft.
Gloria’s penchant for going outside her comfort level did not stop with being a grief counselor. She became involved in her community and started putting her math and organizational skills to work for the greater good. In 1997 she was named “Person of the Year” in Chelsea.
That was due to all of her work for the city, but especially for the two years of efforts she put in to establish a new large playground in the city. She not only was principal fundraiser for the project, she was also its general contractor.
“I was responsible for getting all the money, all the equipment and everything together and then, in five days, we had 3,000 volunteers and we built it. We had every kind of fundraiser going. This million-and-a-half-dollar playground was done in five half-days with all those volunteers,” she recalled, not boasting, but amazed at all that was accomplished.
