By Ron Hayes
DELRAY BEACH — Mildred Toledano Barrett loved bright red lipstick, getting her hair curled, collecting antiques, dancing, horror movies, red beans, white wine — and people.
She hated being called Mildred.
To friends, she was always Millie. To her four children, she was “Big M.” To her grandchildren, she was MeMe. And to all who knew and loved her, she was an unforgettable character.
Mrs. Barrett died November 17. She was 67, and had been a resident of Boca Raton and Delray Beach since 1972.
“Millie not only had a good sense of humor, she had an outrageous one,” her children recalled during her funeral at St. Lucy Catholic Church in Highland Beach. “Her sense of humor ranged from the genteel to the dry to the sarcastic to the witty, and even to the naughty.”
She was born Mildred Pratt on March 12, 1943, in New Orleans, LA.
At 16, she spied a lifeguard named Jimmy Barrett by the pool at the Hilton Airport Hotel there and stuffed her bikini top to attract his attention.
Seven years later, while studying sociology at Lousiana State University she proposed to him. He put her off until he finished medical school, then proposed to her.
Dr. Barrett, a dermatologist, died in 2000, after nearly 34 years of marriage.
After their wedding, the couple moved to San Francisco, where Mrs. Barrett worked as a store detective for Macy’s — briefly.
“She once found an elderly lady shoplifting and felt so sorry for her that she told her to ‘Run like the wind,’” her daughter, Ashley Dalzell, recalled. “She wasn’t that effective as a detective.”
Later, she found work with AAA, preparing maps for travelers.
“She got fired because she was routing people into the ocean,” her daughter said. “Her geography was not the best.”
Mrs. Barrett found her true calling as a homemaker and mother. Driving through Boca Raton one day, her daughter remembers, Mrs. Barrett was abruptly cut off by another driver. She pulled up beside him and yelled, “Children, man your birds!” Waiting for the light to change, the offending driver was saluted by an array of pre-adolescent middle fingers.
In later life, she took to watching horror movies while exercising on her treadmill.
“It gets my heart rate up, dahlin’,” she would explain.
Mrs. Barrett was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, the Junior League, the Boca Raton and Delray Beach historical societies, and was a fundraiser for the Morikami Museum and Bethesda Memorial Hospital.
Now, instead of saying, “Let’s have a really good time,” her children say, “Let’s have a Millie good time.”
In addition to Ashley Barrett Dalzell, of San Francisco, she is survived by daughters Elizabeth Hadley Barrett of San Francisco, and Eileen Nicole Barrett of Boynton Beach; a son, James O’Connor Barrett of Los Angeles; and two grandchildren, Kaelin and Chloe Dalzell.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation the National Brain Tumor Foundation, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
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