SOUTH PORTLAND – Ira M. Milliken, 95, of Fillmore Avenue, died Wednesday, July 13, at the Pine Point Center for Health Care and Rehabilitation.

He was born in Scarborough, on May 23, 1910, the son of Oliver and Lida Harmon Milliken. He attended Scarborough schools and graduated as the salutatorian of Scarborough High School, Class of 1927. He furthered his education at Northeastern University and at Harvard University.

He began a lifelong love and appreciation of aviation as a teenager on the family farm in Scarborough. He hauled gravel with a horse and buggy to help build the runway at the original Portland Airport, which was located in Scarborough. That fascination with aviation led to his becoming an aviation mechanic. As a mechanic, he had the privilege of working a plane that belonged to Amelia Earhardt – that plane now hangs at the Smithsonian. He also became a pilot, learning to fly in bi-planes.

He then went to Washington, D.C., and later Boston, where he was employed by the Federal Aviation Administration. He returned to Portland in the early 1950s, where he worked for the FAA at the Portland International Jetport, retiring as an inspector/administrator in 1974.

It was while he was working in Boston that he met his future wife, Mary R. O’Neill, and they married in Brighton, Mass., on Nov. 11, 1945.

More than anything else in life, he enjoyed spending his time with his family. He also enjoyed camping and hiking, and shared these hobbies with his family.

He was a former member of the Appalachian Mountain Club and was a communicant of St. John the Evangelist Church.

Surviving is his wife of 59 years, Mary O’Neill Milliken, of South Portland; a daughter, Maryellen Smith of Lewiston; four sons, John Milliken and his wife, Dixie, of Nashua, N.H., Robert Milliken and his wife, Teresa, of Long Valley, N.J., Richard Milliken and his wife, Lisa, of Scarborough, and Ronald Milliken and his wife, Elizabeth Jennnings, of Farmington; two sisters, Reta Mainville of Cape Elizabeth and Margery Fancy of Scarborough; and 11 grandchildren.