Meredith Plant Millspaugh, who served on many civic boards in Baltimore and owned a company that offered tours of the city, died of Alzheimer's disease on June 8 at Roland Park Place. She was 87.
Mrs. Millspaugh had an insatiable interest in Baltimore, its architecture, its history and its neighborhoods, becoming a cheerleader for the city when many residents were leaving for the counties. She also had a knack for making friends, her family said.
"She really did have an incredible way of connecting with people, and she was insatiably curious about people and places," said her daughter, Lisa Millspaugh Schroeder of Baltimore. "Whether she was traveling internationally or just walking down the sidewalk … she literally wanted to talk to everyone she met. She had a way of drawing people into conversation. It took forever to get anywhere because her journey was all about connecting with people."
Mrs. Millspaugh was born in Jacksonville, Fla., to Graeme D. Plant, a businessman, and Elizabeth Davenport Plant, a poet, magazine writer and newspaper columnist. She was raised in Macon, Ga., and in a home near a 350-foot high cliff on Lookout Mountain in Tenn.
She attended St. Mary's Junior College in Raleigh, N.C., and the Wesleyan Conservatory of Fine Arts in Macon. After college, she moved briefly to New York City, working for Eastern Airlines and The Tog Shop on Seventh Avenue. She then moved to Washington, D.C., and worked as a receptionist at the Egyptian Embassy.
One day while visiting her sister in Baltimore at a dance, she met Martin Millspaugh, who then worked for the Evening Sun. The two wed in 1952 and moved to Bolton Hill. Mrs. Millspaugh worked around that time as a display designer for Samuel Kirk & Son, a silversmith, and as executive assistant for Betty Cooke, the jewelry designer and owner of The Store Limited.
The family moved to the Rockland Historic District in Brooklandville in Baltimore County in 1953, and in 1965, they bought a rundown home on Ridgewood Road in Roland Park, which they restored.
At the time, Mr. Millspaugh had formed the nonprofit that oversaw the revitalization of the Inner Harbor and Charles Center, which later evolved into the Baltimore Development Corp. Mrs. Millspaugh also became a civic booster in her own right.
She began leading Downtown Discovery Tours in the late 1960s to reacquaint suburbanites with downtown Baltimore. The effort evolved into VIP Tours of Baltimore, which took tourists around to places such as Little Italy and Lexington Market.
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun in 1970, Mrs. Millspaugh reflected on how some would speak negatively about Baltimore.
"Then, in the past couple of years, you'd begin to hear people say Baltimore's kind of a nice place to live," she told the Sun. "At first, they'd have to say it in a whisper; they were afraid to say it out loud … it just wasn't the thing to do. But then gradually it became a cult, until now, if anybody dares to say something else, he'd be shouted down."
Mr. Millspaugh said at the time, downtown Baltimore was "torn up" by the development of Charles Center and the Inner Harbor.
"The business community was worried that people would think it would always be ugly and torn up," he said. "She went on and refined those tours ... she was very smart and capable of being involved in these things."
In the 1980s, Mrs. Millspaugh was the executive director of the Evergreen Museum and Library, a collection of fine and decorative arts, rare books and manuscripts collected by the Garrett family.
She also sat on the Baltimore Commission for Historic and Architectural Preservation from 1974 to 1988; the board of trustees for the Peale Museum from 1974 to 1981 and the Tourism Council of Baltimore from 1978 to 1981. She was on the board of the Edgar Allen Poe Society and helped catalyze the renovation of the Poe House.
Other civic boards she served on included the Society for the Preservation of Maryland Antiquities, the Baltimore City Forestry Board and the Waxter Center Foundation. She was also a member of the Junior League of Baltimore and was an accomplished archer.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. and Mrs. Millspaugh traveled around the world to teach officials in other cities about how to revitalize their waterfronts.
Her children recalled a mother who always welcomed people of all ages to her home and kept a drawerful of cookies in the kitchen for visiting children.
"It didn't matter whether you were six or 60," said a son, M. Laurence Millspaugh III of Bethesda. "She had an ability to connect with any age. It was legendary."
Services will at 11 a.m. June 25 at the Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St. in Baltimore.
In addition to her husband, son and daughter, Mrs. Millspaugh is survived by another son, Thomas E.D. Millspaugh of Baltimore; 11 grandchildren; and five nieces and nephews. A fourth child, Meredith M. Durham, died in 1999.
An earlier version misstated Mrs. Millspaugh's first name. The Sun regrets the error.