Do you have a Memory of Mills Lawn? A Story? A Poem?
We’re also looking for artifacts and stories from the Apple Butter Festival!

Please Send Your Reflections & Thoughts of Mills Lawn
millslawngreenspace@gmail.com

To know about Mills Lawn greenspace is to know its stories. We would love to have stories from all different angles. From families, strollers, dog walkers, artists, poets, actors, musicians, jugglers, craftspeople, frisbee golfers, teachers, sports teams, students, tumblers, picnickers, arborists, activists, and daydreamers. And photos to go with your stories would be extra special!

NOTE: From the 1850s, see the poem at the bottom of this page called The Lawn dedicated to Judge Mills!

Yellow Springs Little League by Michael Slaughter

The memories I have of this free and open greenspace are highlighted by the photographs of two Yellow Springs Little League teams. We played multiple summer baseball games on the Little league field adjacent to Phillips Street in the late 60’s. This field was located on the Mills House property site. As a new resident to the Yellow Springs community in 1967, this space provided me a warm welcoming playground. I made numerous friends and acquaintances on this field.

There were only two teams since we didn’t have enough kids for more. We did not play teams from other towns. No other towns would entertain playing us, since they despised the liberal community. These were evening games, so around 20 to 50 people would attend. Both teams were great and a number of us hit home runs every game. The home runs were definitely outside of the rear fence area. Mostly done with Louisville Slugger bats! We were an enthusiastic bunch of kids with great camaraderie. The pictures highlight my friends, our current local and past residents of Yellow Springs.

Little League Baseball at Mills Lawn by Jamie Woodburn

It was in the early spring in I979. I had lived in Yellow Springs for a few years after college and had recently married and moved into a small house on Elm St. It was across from the Catholic Church, and from the very green, Mills Lawn. A friend from town, "The Sarge”, who worked at Wright Patterson, talked me into coaching a Little League Team at Mills Lawn. He passed off a bag of bats and balls and even the set of bases to be kept at my house. “The Sarge” was the commissioner of the league as well as the umpire for every game. He would show up with his facemask on top of his head and a large inflatable chest protector, which he held on his arm like a shield. He would hustle the players on and off the field, and call every ball, strike, and out with the greatest, dramatic flair.

The Little League field sat in the corner of Mills Lawn, with the trees along Phillips St. shading the third base bench, while the first base bench baked in the sun. Since I lived nearby, I always arrived early to secure the shade. It was very competitive and important to gain any advantage. At that time, there were games every weekday evening and the league was able to field 5 teams. My team was the “Phillies” and our greatest rivals were Frank Lewis’s “Pirates”. Frank and I were always on the lookout for new families, moving into town that might provide a talented player.

Grandma Dillon lived in a house across from the field on Phillips St. She always enjoyed watching the games from her porch and occasionally would provide a pitcher of cool, ice water for the players. The Dillon family was very supportive of the teams. Both their sons, David and Steve played on the Phillies, and when their daughter, Theresa showed an interest, she became the first girl to play baseball in the Yellow Springs Little League. There were many people and players that were important at that time. I hope others might contribute more memories and stories.

Mills Lawn Greenspace Memories by Jon Barlow Hudson

I have fond memories of playing little league baseball on the diamond at the corner of Phillips and Limestone. I recall back to 5th grade at Mills Lawn and all the times playing on the grounds there at the time and over the years. I also recall attending classes or something of the like in the Mills Building.

In the latter 50's when the circus or carnival came to town they set up on Mills Lawn, so that was great fun for all. I also recall someone setting up a fire pit with a giant copper pot in which they made apple sauce to sell to carnival visitors. That was really good as I recall.
And in the mid 90's, during cancer treatment, I would come to Mills Lawn for my running path for self healing, as I needed to run on grass and not cement. It is common knowledge that being in nature for healing is critically important, and both the Glen and Mills Lawn have been this for me, for one, and I know for others as well.

An Interview with Phil King

Why is preserving the Mills Lawn Greenspace important to you?

To stop the destruction of green space locally, as most recently exemplified by the Antioch Golf Course fiasco - once 24 acres of playing fields, pedestrian walkway and concert venue, now a largely fenced off impassable weed field. Mills Lawn is the last frontier! It is simply unthinkable that Mills Lawn would be “repurposed."

Why is preserving the Mills Lawn Greenspace important for Yellow Springs?

To serve current and future generations as both respite and locus of community activities. The main thing about the Mills Lawn Greenspace is that it was there. Its value lies in its mere presence, not only in its use for activities.

What is your first memory of the Mills Lawn Greenspace?

Going down to Mills House for first grade at the Antioch School, (September 1948). Except for a garage out a ways to the Southwest of the building, there were no other structures on Mills Lawn. There were a number of big old trees. Two of them were hollow and made fine hiding places in games of Hide and Seek, as well as providing shelter from the rain. To my little kid self, the space seemed immense and the trees towering sentinels surrounding and protecting the school and the kids. First day of first grade: I drew a picture with crayons of a house - my specialty. I showed it to a third grader whom I admired. “Too many windows,” he said. Not a great start to my academic career!

What do you remember about the Mills Mansion?

I remember it as my school. It was always “Mills House,” never “Mills Mansion.” And it wasn’t a mansion by any stretch of the imagination - just a big old, comfortable, by the 1940s somewhat shabby house. The Antioch School was there until the 1950-51 school year, when it moved to the then new school on the far side of the College golf course, where it is to this day. There was a big elevated front porch running the width of the building, facing east (toward what is now Mills lawn School). On this porch and in front of it the school kids would put on plays in the Spring, a play each for the younger group (1st and 2nd grades), middle group (3rd and 4th) and upper group (5th and 6th). In our first (or perhaps second) grade year, we presented the classic “Stone Soup” play in which a boiling pot of hot water miraculously turns into delicious soup, with the aid of many vegetables added as an afterthought. Another landmark is the big rock, still there, I believe, which would have been just past the porch on the south side.

Of course, the Mills Lawn Elementary School wasn’t there, nor the parking lots to the east and south; it was all lawn and trees, clear to Walnut, Limestone, Phillips and Elm Streets. Mills House was more or less in the middle of the land, slightly closer to Walnut than to Phillips, slightly closer to Limestone than to Elm.

Our first-grade classroom was on the first floor. Middle group across the hall. Upper group up on the second floor (we never ventured there.) Behind it was another room and then the kitchen, which for school purposes was the art and music are. Our music teacher in the second grade was a student teacher from the College, Coretta Scott (later Coretta Scott King). She was denied a position at the public school because of race, but the Antioch School took her on.

There may have been an apartment on the third floor that was occupied then, but I have no recollection of that. In later years (1950s and into the 60s) Vern Morrow and family lived in that apartment. Vern was the custodian at Bryan High School, and had a number of (four?) daughters, all somewhat younger than I was. By that time Mills House was being used for community arts classes, and perhaps other purposes (??) I don’t know when other uses stopped, or when, why and how the decision was made to tear Mills House down. I think it was after 1968, when I had left town.

Did you continue to enjoy the Mills Lawn Greenspace in Junior High School & Senior High School?

I enjoyed that it was there, and we played baseball and tennis there. The high school (Bryan) had no cafeteria, so the junior high and high school kids would traipse up there each day for lunch at the elementary school. Little League came to Mills Lawn in 1954 and the tennis courts (now derelict) were built in the 1960s.

What do you remember about the Apple Butter Festival and other community events on Mills Lawn Greenspace?

Phil is writing a novel, partly autobiographical, in which growing up in Yellow Springs plays a big part. He answers the above question with this excerpt from his novel:

The Old Man is at a meeting of a committee to preserve the twelve-acre downtown park as open green space. The group gathers under the three oaks right across the street from the Catholic Church. The elementary school that has sat on the East side of the park for seventy years is due to be replaced elsewhere in town, and advocates of increased car parking, new businesses, and affordable housing are all laying claims to the land for their purposes.

This is our Central Park, thought the Old Man. It never crossed his mind that it would be used in any other way. The idea of “sacred space” has become something of a cliche, but if any space in the Village is sacred, this is it. The park was the estate of the man whose father founded the town in the early 1800s. In the Old Man’s youth, the original stately house still stood in the middle of the park. It was in use as the laboratory school for the local college, and it was where the First Grader had first learned to hit fungos and fell in love with the game played with bat and ball. I don’t see my commemorative statue, noted the Old Man wryly. Jim Thome has one, why not I?

There on the green lawn in a circle of people on folding chairs, he realized that he was looking across the way at the remnant backstop of his Little League field, from a vantage point deep behind where the fence would have been in left-center field.

Also, that piece of land was the site of Apple Butter Festivals in the 1940s and 50s. Holes were dug; log fires laid. Massive iron pots set in the holes, apples, cinnamon, molasses, mixed and stirred for hours and days, then bottled and sold. Roast chicken grilled over those same coals. Pony rides, games, booths of various kinds. The first demonstration of polaroid photography - the Boy sat astride a stationary Merry-Go-Round horse, leaned way over and had his picture taken. What a thrill to be holding the developed photo in his hand just a few minutes later. The Boy was nine.

In later years the park was the site of an annual Easter egg hunt, with one golden egg, the grand prize, hidden especially carefully. Except that one kid, living across from the park, had an especially clear view from his bedroom window of the adults hiding the eggs. Guess who discovered the golden egg that year!

This happened to him often in town; he would view a scene and see not only its present configuration but all the structures, events and activities that had taken place there in his lifetime - all the purposes for which that particular piece of land was used: Field, garden, greenhouse, house, shop, and field again; layered in time, circling around and back upon itself, each layer evoking a set of memories and meanings. My mind is an internal archeological dig, he thought. There is an incalculable richness to living to old age in the same place - life becomes not just a time lapse photograph but an epic movie.

Let’s hope this group can muster the will and develop a strategy to keep this park green! Already they have 500 signatures in support, this in a town of 4,000 people.

Miss Scott was an Antioch student from 1853-1855.
Read the whole poem at this link.

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Research, writing, artifacts by members of the Citizens to Preserve Mills Lawn Greenspace. Web work by Terry Smith.