Back in Traverse City, the future governor worked in the family business (Milliken Department stores), which he took over when his father died, while Helen Milliken raised two children, Elaine, and Bill. Entering politics with her husbands election to the state Senate in 1960, she kept a relatively
After her husband left office, Helen Milliken had little to do with the Republican Party (with the exception of an occasional gathering of what became known as the Milliken moderates, loyalists to her husbands brand of Republicanism who have exercised less influence in the GOP since he left offic
Headlees criticism of Helen Milliken and the ERA, which he regarded as a vehicle aimed at promoting gay rights, elicited a rare burst of intemperance from the former governor, who told Free Press columnist Hugh McDiarmid in 1983 that Headlee puts me in mind of an ass.
