Billie Millner

I knew Billie literally my whole life.  He and Anne were friends with my parents, and Billie also was my Dad’s lawyer.  Billie’s daughter, Margie, and I were close and I spent an enormous amount of time at the Millner household growing up. I went on family vacations, attended Edward and Lisa’s wedding as a member of the family and later served as a bridesmaid for Margie.  I clerked for Marshall, Blalock, Garner and Millner in the summer, and when Billie and Svein Lassen left the firm in 1987 to join Jones, Blechman, Woltz and Kelly, they took me with them.

Billie had charisma, and rock-solid pure motives.  Money did not motivate him.  He was in constant pursuit of the greater good, whether it benefited him or not.

Billie and his dog

He loved people – really, really loved them, to a fault – and they loved him back.  He knew everybody. Everywhere he went, people would yell, “Hello, Mr. Millner!” and he would yell back “Hello! How are YOU?”

Calling on his days delivering milk for his family’s dairy, he could name every street in Newport News, in order. He was a talented artist.  He could think through a problem and solve it with both fierce determination and a casual demeanor – combining a friendly, open nature with a serious, tenacious streak.

When he was working on a case, he would grab whatever associate was in range and enlist them. He might send you to some distant courthouse to do a title search or tell you to count cars at intersection all day or go buy poster board and magic markers.  It didn’t matter what else you were doing at the time: He had a deadline and the deadline came first.  We called it getting “Millnerized.” The only way to avoid it was to avoid him, and nobody wanted to do that.  We loved him too much and he was too much fun. Life as an associate at a law firm could be a grind – but not if you were hanging out with Billie Millner.

He loved being a lawyer and being in the thick of things. What he loved most, though, were his wife, Anne, and their four really spectacularly wonderful children, their spouses and partners, and their families.