Mildred (Millie) Louise Alexander Wyant, wife of Ralph, mother of Steve, Dave, and Greg, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on August 28, 1926
to Mabel and Carl Alexander. Her dad was a carpenter and her mother was a homemaker. Being the oldest of six children, two boys and four girls,
she helped with the youngest when she was pretty young herself, thus giving her a love of children that she still has today. Her two brothers were
closest to her in age, so she was a bit of a tomboy. When Millie was seven, her family moved to the country. It wasn't far from town but still rural enough
to have a cow, chickens, and a garden. The Alexander family never went hungry during the depression as so many others did.
High School had prepared Millie for office work and she was a secretary for five years until her first child was born. She then was a stay-at-home mom for twenty-two years until going back to work as a bookkeeper in the payroll department at the Marion County Association for Retarded Citizens and later at Indiana Department of Corrections.
Millie and Ralph are now retired and have enjoyed traveling to all fifty states and to Europe. She says most women thinks she's nuts for loving to go backpacking and camping. Millie's backpacking trips with Ralph and son Dave include a 3-day trip into Utah's Paria Canyon, a 5-day trip in the Grand Canyon, and 8-day and 10-day trips in Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. All of these occured at age 65 or older. Millie has been to the bottom of the Grand Canyon three times and, at age 69, climbed Arizona's highest point, Mt. Humphreys, elevation 12,633'. She says all of these were wonderful experiences.
Besides enjoying her only grandchild and writing about memories, another hobby now is working in her "secret garden", which is a little flower garden hidden at the bottom of a hill in the back yard of Millie and Ralph's rural home near Avon, Indiana. Nobody sees it but her until she has the joy of showing it to people. Millie's granddaughter, Sara, named it "The Secret Garden".