Remembering Vendor Murry Mills

Remembering Vendor Murry Mills

by Suzanne Hanney

“Welcome to my office,” Vendor Murry Mills said on a weeknight in 2019 as he was selling StreetWise at the Walgreens on the northwest corner of Clark Street and Wilson Avenue. Mills had been at this location for about 10 months, and he fit himself into what he called a “melting pot of people: European, Asian, Black, different lifestyles.”

In rapid succession, Mills greeted his regulars: a woman and her granddaughter pushing her doll in a stroller, a woman recovering from back surgery and her dog, a 40-something woman he directed away from a potential stumbling hazard. He greeted a Muslim man and his wife, son and daughter with a “salaam aleikum.” Another regular was pulled toward Mills and his bag of dog treats by her golden doodle, and a man discussed social justice issues with him.

“The interesting thing about Murry: he psychoanalyzed a lot, the way two people in AA will sit down and talk about their addiction and how they got to that point,” said former roommate Lee A. Holmes of Mills, 51, who died just over a year ago, on July 28, 2022.

Murry Mills

Holmes was also a StreetWise vendor, and more recently, became Mills’s brother-in-law, through his marriage to Mills’s sister, Vendor Paula Green Holmes. The couple agree that Mills could have been a therapist. Even as a youngster, he loved these kinds of conversations.

“He had so many different interests,” Holmes said. “He could get around vendors and talk about StreetWise. He could talk about music and when he was coming up with his daddy and what they was listening to. He could talk about cars. But he was very caught up in street life.”

Mills’s mother kicked him out of the house at age 13 “for being rambunctious, gangbanging,” he recalled in a Mother’s Day feature in 2020.

“She said the police were on the street in front because what I was doing was wrong and either the police would have the house or she would. What changed me was hard times, going to jail.” However, his mother also advised him to “Never give up, never give in and stay strong.”

Mills had spent years in homelessness, in jail, and struggling to support his family, he recalled. He came to StreetWise after he saw two vendors counting their cash at Pacific Garden Mission, where they were all staying. That was nearly 30 years ago.

“Ever since then, I was hooked. [StreetWise] has helped me out of many difficult jams in my life, taught me how to be a businessman, an entrepreneur,” he said in 2019. He was proud that people told him they liked the way he presented the magazine to them: not pushy, but a little bit offhand. He previously sold StreetWise at Broadway and Barry.

As it happened, in the months before his death, Mills had been trying to find peace with himself, Holmes said. “He always talked about his mom, his family. That lets me know he was family-oriented, he did care about them.”

In the printed obituary for his memorial service, daughter Fantasha Mills said she would miss his honest opinion and funny jokes, laughing and watching karate movies together.

“I love and miss you so much,” Paula Green Holmes wrote to her older brother in the obituary. “There’s nothing in the world I could want, just for you to be here.”

“Murf was a very active and joyous person, who loved having a great time and spending time with his family and friends," according to the printed obit. "Murf was a great provider for his family.”

He was also a “true believer,” according to the obituary, and a graduate of South Shore High School.

Other survivors include his father, Murry J. Mills, Sr.; stepmother, Margaret Mills; children, Darius Mills and Denzel Lucas; five grandchildren; aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. His mother, the former Paula Diane Irving, preceded him in death.