Dirigo Deep Dives #4: Dora Anne Mills

Deep Diver is thrilled to feature legitimate Maine royalty in this episode of Deep Dives. True to her roots in Maine’s culture, this particular princess is humble, approachable, and not at all full of herself. More Angus King than King Charles. Dora Anne Mills’s life meets at the intersection of Maine, community, and public health. Everything about her screams all three.

Dora repping the Hearts!

We met on Zoom on the morning of the semifinal game (ouch!) in Spokane. Dora arrived on camera wearing her orange blaze jersey and Hearts of Pine hat. Such fandom so early in the day! She grew up in Farmington, the youngest of five siblings and daughter to English teacher mom and attorney dad (not just any attorney: he served as US attorney for Maine and in the Maine state legislature). Parents both hailed from farming communities, one in Aroostook County and the other in Stonington. Add Farmington to the family homesteads and the Mills have a place to stay in every corner of our large state. When asked the seemingly simple question of “What jobs have you held in Maine?” Dora produced the following list: Waitress, newspaper delivery girl, bank teller, grocery cashier, lawn mower, babysitter, and pediatrician (all in Farmington); Director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Maine’s public health director under Governors Baldacci and King (Augusta), Vice President for Clinical Affairs at the University of New England (Portland and Biddeford), and current Chief Health Improvement Officer at Maine Health. This girl gets around, especially in Maine!

Deep Diver’s degrees of separation with just about everybody in the world plummeted when she met Dora. Having worked in state government, she is friends with most of the Maine delegation and public health officials around the country. She does things like attend presidential inaugurations. When she mentions meeting Michael Jackson in a Los Angeles pediatric ward or spending time with the Obamas, she genuinely isn’t bragging. It’s just her life. Oh, and her sister happens to live in a lovely state-owned property in Augusta. When Janet comes to Fitzy, she’s sitting with Dora and her entourage (Dora’s, not the Governor’s).

Dora with her son Anthony at a match.

Dora’s path to Hearts of Pine fandom and Dirigo Union membership is as football-pitch-perfect a Maine community story as can be. If Deep Diver wrote it as fiction, Longfellow Books would label it too sentimental. The first thread is Dora’s entry into the soccer world, which came via her son Anthony’s youth soccer career and her own medical training and practice throughout the world. In her global work and travels, she observes that soccer “is not just the beautiful game, it’s also the game of the world.” The second thread is Dora’s engagement in the community and its public health. Son Anthony started playing pickup soccer at Kennedy Park in Portland as he foot-commuted to his AmeriCorps post at East End Community School. Before long, Anthony had become the organizer of Kennedy Park Pickup Soccer, which today has over 2700 followers on Instagram, runs tournaments year-round, and is a cherished gathering spot not just for Portlanders but for cleat-wearers from all 16 counties in Maine.

Who should connect with Anthony and Dora through KPPS? None other than our very own Gabe Hoffman-Johnson. Dora explains: “I’m a public health physician first and foremost. What I could see was that Gabe was truly trying to build a community and not just a soccer team. Especially coming out of the pandemic, I saw this was exactly what we need. We realized that community means everything, for mental health and also physical health. And realizing what a glue soccer is here in Maine with the immigrant community and the rest of Maine. It’s a cultural glue. Everyone from ninth-generation Mainers and recent immigrants” enjoy soccer, and now the Hearts of Pine.

Dora with players from Kennedy Park Pick-up Soccer

She was all in from that moment on. Joining the Dirigo Union was a no-brainer. She wanted to support DU but also sees it as the grassroots community building that is essential for the success of any community-oriented project like the Hearts of Pine. Hearts players show up regularly at Kennedy Park Pickup Soccer tournaments and help at the food bank on Congress Street that Dora’s team organizes.

Dora Anne Mills may be the first true celebrity that Deep Diver has profiled, and she’s the epitome of the kind of celebrity Maine would produce: no flash, just dedication to community and to Maine. And she struggles to share pictures of herself because she’s the one who’s always behind the camera! We can count ourselves lucky that she’s found energy to become a Hearts of Pine superfan. But heck, she’s a true-blue Mainer, so Deep Diver doubts if she had any choice.