Owens-Illinois manager was Mobile Meals helper

6/20/2004

Milton J. Carter, an avid Mobile Meals volunteer and a former department manager at Owens-Illinois Inc. who was a volunteer civilian accountant for an Army supplies unit during World War II, died of a stroke Friday in the Hospice of Northwest Ohio. He was 88.

"He was an Irish Catholic gentleman who enjoyed a good joke, a game of cards, and a beer with his friends and family," his daughter, Susan Carter, said.

Mr. Carter, a New York City native who graduated from Sharon (Pa.) High School in 1933, was a steel worker at Pennsylvania steel mills for several years.

He later went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in education in the late 1930s.

Mr. Carter later taught mathematics in a Pennsylvania boys' reform school for a couple of years until the United States joined World War II.

He tried to enlist for military service, but because he had tuberculosis as a child, Mr. Carter could not get in.

Nevertheless, he volunteered as a civilian employee and was an accountant for an Army supply unit in New Guinea and the Philippines.

After the war, he got a job as a financial accountant at Owens-Illinois in Toledo and worked for the company for 32 years until 1980, when he retired as manager of corporate financial analysis and control.

In retirement, Mr. Carter was a volunteer food server for Mobile Meals in Toledo for 12 years. He also volunteered for the Toledo Area Humane Society and took care of stray cats and dogs in his house over the years, Ms. Carter said.

Mr. Carter was a member of St. Joseph Parish in Sylvania.

Surviving are his wife of 57 years, Mildred Carter; daughters, Susan Carter and Sallie Eddy; son, Mark Carter; and two grandchildren.

There will be no visitation. Services will be held at 1 p.m. tomorrow in St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Sylvania.

The family suggests tributes to the Hospice of Northwest Ohio or the Toledo Area Humane Society.