By Kaitlyn McMullin | Special to the Courier

For more than four decades, Jack Mills has helped shape Claremont’s schools, nonprofits, and community organizations. Now, that work has earned him the city’s honored citizen recognition.

“I don’t look at this as much as an honor to myself, as an opportunity to talk about my current volunteer activity,” Mills said.

Originally from Kansas, Mills and his wife Susan Lominska moved to Claremont in 1977 after first coming to the area for graduate school. Now retired, he has been volunteering for more than four decades and served on Claremont Unified School District’s Board of Education from 1993 to 2007.

Longtime tutor, volunteer, former CUSD Board of Education member, and current Claremont After-School Programs Board of Directors president Jack Mills is the city’s honored citizen for its Fourth of July parade. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

“I think it’s a really positive thing to do with your time,” Mills said.

His two daughters attended Claremont public schools, where he began volunteering as a homeroom parent in 1985.

In 2010, Mills began working with the nonprofit Claremont After-School Programs, which offers free tutoring for Claremont Unified School District students. Soon after he was asked to help CLASP develop a strategic plan and later joined its program evaluation committee. He’s now in his third year as president of CLASP’s Board of Directors.

“Picking up education is the one thing I could personally do to change the world,” he said.

His work with CLASP has become a mutually beneficial experience.

“Selfishly, I would say how much they enrich my life,” Mills said. “I’ve tutored the same young lady now for a year and-a-half, and the kinds of questions she asked me and the kinds of things she teaches me about herself and her family and community she comes from … that has been very rewarding. It’s such an immediate experience. I know my student that I tutor and the other students at the site where I work, and I know their parents. I can see the impact that it’s having.”

Presiding over CLASP’s Board of Directors has also been rewarding.

“It gives me the opportunity to see things that I think could help the organization progress fall into place,” Mills said.

In addition to his work with CLASP, Mills also assists international students. That experience has broadened his perspective and enriched his family’s understanding of other cultures in ways traveling or reading about other countries simply cannot. His family recently hosted two young female students from Asia.

“I think it was very educational for our daughters, with all four of them laying on the ground, showing each other their high school photographs and talking about their friends,” Mills said.

(L-R) Claremont After-School Programs President Jack Mills and U.S. Congresswoman Judy Chu at the nonprofit’s 20th anniversary celebration in November 2025. Photo/by Denise Zondervan

Music has also played a large role in Mills’ life. He started playing piano at age 4, and over the years it has helped relieve stress, and also provided challenges.

“Now that I’m older and more disciplined about practicing, I think it’s just personally rewarding to pursue learning something with a lot of discipline,” he said.

Music has also connected him to the community. He played with the group the Claremont Irregulars and up until recently played trombone in Claremont’s Fourth of July parade.

“It was funny,” Mills said. “I would be in the parade as a school board member at the front of the parade, and then they would drive me back around to the start and I would go through again, playing the trombone.”

Mills reflected on his decades of community service.

“It means being engaged in a lot of hard work but having the satisfaction of seeing that it’s having a positive impact,” Mills said. “Along the way, you meet a lot of really interesting people, both from the clients you are serving, but also the people involved in organizing things.”

Meanwhile CLASP, his latest passion, is always looking for volunteer tutors.

“We need around 100 tutors a year to be able to cover all the slots we have in the program,” he said. More information is at clasp4kids.org/tutor.

Mills will be among the City of Claremont’s honorees in its Fourth of July parade. The one-mile parade kicks off at 1 p.m. at Memorial Park, travels south on Indian Hill Boulevard, west on Harrison Avenue, terminating at Larkin Park. More info is at claremontca.gov/activities-recreation.

Kaitlyn McMullin is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Southern California.