Born: 6 July 1909, United States
Died: 29 January 1984
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Helen Davis
The following is republished from the Minnesota Historical Society’s MNopedia, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. It was written by Nicole Garnjobst.
As a legislator, Helen E. McMillan served Mower County for twelve years. She was also involved in the Red Cross, the Women’s League of Voters, the Human Rights Commission, and the United Council for Church Women.
On July 6, 1909, Helen Elvira Davis was born in Ortonville, Minnesota. Growing up, she attended Marshall High School in Minneapolis and at eighteen left home to join the Albertina Rasch professional ballet troupe in Chicago. She was part of the troupe for three years before returning to Minnesota in 1930. After attending the University of Minnesota for two and a half years, she moved into a secretarial program.
During her time working as a secretary Davis met Kenneth McMillan, an attorney, whom she married on July 10, 1938. During World War II, her husband left for Fort Snelling and ended up fighting first in France, then in Germany, and, finally, in England; he left the military as a sergeant. In 1945, after his return, the couple moved to Austin, Minnesota, where Kenneth was employed as a municipal judge.
In Austin, Helen was involved in several different groups, including the Red Cross, hospital workers, and the Presbyterian Church. She was the secretary of the Governor’s Human Rights Commission, the vice president of United Council of Church Women, and the president of the Austin League of Women Voters for fifteen years. From 1953 until 1955, she served as the president of the Minnesota League of Women Voters.
At the suggestion of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), and after seeing how much she loved being president of the League, Kenneth McMillan convinced his wife to run for the Minnesota House of Representatives. Mower County had just been divided into two different sections, and one of them—district 31B–was largely comprised of Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) voters. In 1962, McMillan was the first woman to be elected as a representative of Mower County. She was subsequently re-elected five times, and served for a total of twelve years. For some of that time, McMillan was the only woman in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
McMillan continued to represent the DFL throughout her career. She served on multiple committees in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Health and Welfare Committee, the Employee Compensation Committee, the Recreation and Water Resources Committee, the Reapportionment Committee, the Legislative Retirement Study Committee, and he Crime Prevention and Corrections Committee, which she chaired in 1973.
McMillan was passionate about education for the mentally ill and was well known for her work in women’s rights. In 1969, she co-sponsored an abortion bill that would have left abortion decisions in the hands of doctors and their patients. Though the bill never made it to the floor, it was later mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade. McMillan also co-authored Minnesota’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1973 and was especially passionate about getting women into the legislature. She later stated that the five new women legislators in office when she retired were her greatest legacy.
In 1970, Kenneth McMillan died while Helen was in office. They had no children. She continued serving for four more years before retiring in 1974 and was only the second woman to head a legislative committee in Minnesota history. To honor her, Mower County named March 18, 1975, Helen E. McMillan Recognition Day and held a dinner for her. At that dinner, Governor Wendell Anderson awarded her with a plaque commending her for her work in the legislature.
Later in her life, McMillan moved into St. Mark’s Lutheran Home in Austin, where she lived until she passed away in 1984. At her funeral, Pat Piper, the current representative of district 31B, gave a tribute and read a letter from Senator Tom Nelson that praised Helen’s compassion, tenacity, and strength of character as qualities others should emulate. On February 28 1984, on National Women’s Day and Women’s History Week, representatives Phyllis Kahn and Pat Piper rose in the House during a session to pay tribute to McMillan.