John Shearer: Olan Mills II Enjoyed Family Portrait Photography Business

By getting children and people of all ages to smile, the Olan Mills portrait studio company brought jobs – and a few additional smiles -- to thousands of Chattanoogans and other employees throughout the United States and beyond.

 

Like many companies, though, a change in the business’ fortunes resulted after decades of bringing pride to the city and name familiarity to the nation.

But it was not competition from other businesses that created the downturn for this national leader in the industry. Instead, it was just technology.

 

The advent of digital cameras and then cameras on phones over the last 25 years made capturing family members and memories easier and quicker and more accessible to all. Freelance photography for those still wanting a professional touch also became easier. 

 

But despite all this, Olan Mills II, who is now in his early 90s, was still wearing a smile like the photography subjects and not a frown as he recently reminisced about his and his family’s long career at the forefront. It was a photographer-like perspective Mr. Mills had, too, even though he was always in the business and development end and was never much of an actual photographer, despite people’s regular assumptions that he was.

 

Talking from a small office in the James Building in business space belonging to his son, Kincaid, he said he had joined the company not long after serving non-combat duty in the Korean War in the 1950s flying helicopters. The McCallie School and Princeton graduate, who grew up in Shepherd Hills, was glad to be back in the happier kind of ‘shooting’ business and quickly went to work for the company.

 

“I got back and went straight to a sales meeting,” he said amidst his office lined with World War II history books and a stack of letters he had written his father during the war and had been sorting. “I went to Missouri and stayed for a year selling door to door. I came back to Chattanooga, and they put me in charge of portrait sales. I managed the group. And then six months later they released the manager here and put me in charge of Chattanooga as manager.” 

 

By that time, the family company had 20-plus years of history since its founding in 1932, the same year such other Chattanooga institutions as Krystal and Rock City started. 

 

The elder Mr. Mills had been raised in Nebraska but moved to Florida in the 1920s to capitalize on the real estate boom. After the Great Depression hit and killed the real estate market there, the elder Mr. Mills was not deterred and changed his picture of success literally to pictures. He moved to Selma, Alabama, and began a business selling restored old pictures. While there, he met and married Mary Stephenson, whose art skills working on the photos helped the business.

 

She had a brother, Henson Stephenson, who designed the Edmund Pettus Bridge that later became famous in the 1965 voting rights march that started there. Mr. Mills II jokingly recalled that a relative in later years went to see the family home and was told by the resident a famous person had lived there. The person thought Olan Mills’ name was going to be mentioned, but instead the resident said Henson Stephenson.

 

The Mills couple later moved to Tuscaloosa and started out taking photos of University of Alabama students due to her connections to the school, and the business of selling door to door to try and get portrait customers began. They would have a studio in each state they operated, for legal and visibility purposes, and the business would later grow to include school and church business, studios in K marts and even glamor studios over the decades. Finishing plants were also located in such places as Dallas and Waco in Texas, Springfield in Ohio, and in Chattanooga, where the headquarters and other operations were located. 

 

Early on after relocating the headquarters here in 1943, they had facilities on Georgia Avenue near Oak Street and in the Chattanooga Bank Building.

 

Mr. Mills II said the decision to relocate to Chattanooga had come after they had already moved to Springfield but were needing to expand while growing during World War II. Thinking it might be best to have a second facility, they thought about moving back toward Tuscaloosa, where they formerly had a lot of faithful employees, although some had gone to Ohio.

 

Thinking about locating halfway between Ohio and Alabama, they considered both Lexington, Ky., and Chattanooga. Lexington seemed fine except Mr. Mills Sr. noticed someone with a mask and realized it was hay fever season. So, that helped him decide to locate to Chattanooga, where they had their headquarters, and processing and proofing facilities.

 

In the 1960s, their main offices were on Carter Street in the Golden Gateway in a Derthick and Henley-designed building until they moved to 4325 Amnicola Highway in the mid-1970s in a structure that has since become part of the Chattanooga State-affiliated campus. 

 

They also at one time had a facility on McCallie Avenue east of Warner Park and had a finishing plant off Highway 153 much later. The old Miller Bros. off Brainerd Road was also a wedding and school picture division headquarters for a period, and numerous studios were located throughout town.

 

When they moved to Chattanooga, the Olan Mills Sr. family lived for several years at 208 Brookwood Drive in Shepherd Hills. In later life, the older Mills’ couple moved to the Continental Apartments. Olan Mills Sr. died in 1978, while his wife, Mary, passed away in 1974. They are buried in Forest Hills Cemetery.

 

Mr. Mills II said that about five years after he began working for the company, his brother, Charles G. Mills, joined the firm. After their father retired in 1969 at the age of 65, the two worked together heading the operation until Charles’ death in 1998.

 

“We were able to work as a family by splitting the responsibilities,” he said, adding that each one was interested in certain areas. “We trusted each other. We were able to survive in the family business and it was beneficial to both of us. Both of us loved what we did.”

 

They also had two sisters now deceased, Patricia Mills Hutcheson and the younger Sharon Mills. 

 

Mr. Mills II, who said the work was still hard and he had to travel a lot, said part of the reason for the company’s early success was that his father was very gregarious and had a natural salesman’s personality. 

 

“He was a very charismatic person,” he said of his father, who had only one year of college at the University of Nebraska. “His personality was such that he loved being with people.”

 

His father was more focused on the company than civic affairs, his son said, and would often entertain traveling company employees, whether in such places as an upper outdoor area of a Dallas apartment building or a home on Lake Chickamauga he also had.

 

“He loved to cook and always had a grill,” said Mr. Mills II, who admittedly got more of his personality from his mother. “He grew up not being able to eat steaks, so his idea of the good life was steak, potatoes and beans and a bottle of Scotch.”

 

Despite the company’s growth and development of increasingly complex equipment and techniques – which Mr. Mills II took an interest in and was recently recognized for with a School Photographers of America Chairman’s Award – the business was still all about basic selling.

 

And to try and make sales, the company and Mr. Mills Sr. over the years came up with or even copied such ideas as offering an 8-by-10-inch portrait for only $1, telemarketing calls, and a three-sitting deal to keep the studios busy when it was not just Christmas or Easter.

 

Long before telemarketing and door-to-door sales had such negative connotations, Mr. Mills II remembers making a call to one woman, and he could tell she was lonely and looking for someone to talk to simply about her day.

 

Also, as he was learning the company operations as a younger executive, he remembers going to the plant in Ohio and seeing five women sitting around a table signing the Olan Mills name on photographs before equipment started doing the work. He said the higher-end photographers signed or printed their names on photographs, and his father wanted his firm to be respected.

 

It ended up being a respected company indeed. Kodak did a nationwide survey in the early 1980s and asked people what business they thought of when asked about portrait studios, and more than 60 percent said Olan Mills.

 

Gene Harrell, who operates Advanced Photographic Solutions in Cleveland, Tn., which prints photos taken by school photographers in a business that has managed to stay viable, is a big fan of the company’s history. 

 

He has also gotten to know Mr. Mills II over the years and helped nominate him for that first-ever School Photographers of America award earlier this year.

 

“Olan was always interested in the process,” said Mr. Harrell, adding that he was also a people person and enjoyed his employees. “He is interested in technology more than the results. He always kept his facilities state of the art.”

 

Mr. Harrell said that if Mr. Mills II saw a need for updated technology and such equipment was not on the market, he tried to develop his own way of aiding and improving the photo printing process.

 

He added that the two have kept in touch over the years and that Mr. Mills has periodically visited Mr. Harrell’s plant and seen how technology has changed. 

 

As an example of his interest in technology, when the Olan Mills company began entering the church directory business, he went on a trip to Germany with late friend Joe Schmissrauter Jr. of the Textile Printing Co. (now TPC) to see the most modern printing presses. 

 

Unfortunately, technology would catch up with this company led by someone who loved technology.

 

As the company struggled to sustain the business after smart phones arrived, it was able to make a noble exit by selling the entire business to the Lifetouch company in 2011 after the company initially wanted only the church division, Mr. Mills said.

 

But the historical legacy remains, and the Olan Mills company name that was stamped on customers’ photos can be found on family photos still displayed in homes around the country. The company name was also obviously still in Mr. Mills’ heart as he reminisced.

 

“It was very enjoyable,” he said. “I got to meet a lot of people.”

 

* * *

 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net