On an unseasonably warm evening in February, dinner guests at General Mark A. Milley’s Virginia home were nervously wondering what could possibly be going on.
General Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been recalled once, twice, three times and retreated upstairs to a secure room to confer with other senior military officials. His wife Hollyanne was also missing.
A Chinese spy balloon was discovered over the western United States. Soon President Biden was on the phone with General Milley, his highest-ranking military official, unbeknownst to the guests below. And Mrs. Milley, a nurse for nearly four decades, was busy making calls from another room upstairs, oblivious to the drama unfolding next door.
“I was on the phone with patients,” Ms. Milley recalled of the evening, “so I couldn’t come over.”
That parallel commitment to their work has continued throughout the chairman’s dramatic four-year term, which ends Saturday, in which the Milleys have navigated a global pandemic, the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and repeated attacks by former President Donald J. Trump card. Without saying it, the couple interviewed at their dinner table in Arlington leaves the impression that the term is ending not a moment too soon.
Ms. Milley, 58, has worked almost wherever her husband was stationed, although she did not accompany him on deployments. A list of more than 20 stops and missions is posted in her house on a stack of posters almost as high as the door next door. She is one of the few wives of a Joint Chiefs chairman who has had a successful career in their own right. And as the chairman prepares to retire, Ms. Milley has no intention of slowing down and plans to return to the field as a Red Cross volunteer.
“She says to me, ‘You’ve been deployed all our lives,'” Gen. Milley said. “‘Now you stay home and I’ll do the mission.'”
“I have the skills, our children are grown and I have the time,” Ms Milley added.
Ms. Milley wears a CPR mask everywhere and has taken part in more than one official event. Her most famous spontaneous rescue occurred on Veterans Day 2020 at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
“I saw this gentleman, he just looked weak as he walked up to the memorial,” Ms. Milley said. In the seconds that she looked away from him, he fell to the floor, motionless.
She quickly began chest compressions, potentially saving his life, minutes before Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence arrived.
“The mere thought of having to speak publicly completely intimidates them,” said Rosemary Williams, a former Department of Veterans Affairs official and a close friend of the couple. “That changes when someone stands in front of her who is sick or injured. Suddenly she’s in front, she pushes people aside, she gives orders.”
Mrs. Milley is known for handing out homemade cookies to military families she meets on a trip overseas with her husband. But the reality of her final four years in Washington was often more stressful, and some people close to Ms. Milley say the experience was at times very hard on her.
June 1, 2020 may have been the low point of General Milley’s tenure. Wearing military fatigues, he marched behind Trump and his White House advisers through nearby Lafayette Square to take a photo in front of St. John’s Church after Park Police used tear gas to clear Black Lives Matter protesters in the park .
Gen. Milley realized too late that he had helped create the impression that the military had supported Mr. Trump’s stunt, he later said.
“He talked about it a lot,” Ms. Milley said. “It was personally difficult. It was difficult watching the media evolve and how it affected our children and our extended family.”
General Milley wrote a resignation letter a week later, telling Mr. Trump that he was causing “irreparable harm” and “ruining the international order,” but was advised to remain at the Pentagon. Shortly afterwards, he apologized in a video: “I shouldn’t have been there” and called the incident “a mistake I learned from.”
Ms Milley knew he had written the letter but said she had not read it and stood “behind every decision he made”.
“I think he went through the pros and cons; I think he went back on his beliefs,” she said.
“I’m glad he didn’t resign,” she added.
The turmoil of this time was not unusual for the couple. Moving has been a constant in Mrs. Milley’s career, but she believes living in different places has made her a stronger nurse. While at Fort Polk in Louisiana, she learned how to administer an antidote after a snakebite. At Fort Drum, a few miles south of the Canadian border in New York, she overcame cold injuries, a threat she had not faced as a child in Atlanta.
As her husband rose in rank, she devoted more time to ensuring that the families of deceased service members had the resources to recover: food, child care, a strong support network. As her influence grew, Ms. Milley began lobbying on behalf of military families to address both local and systemic issues.
“That’s how we get through everyday life sometimes,” Ms. Milley said. “I think of these families who are so frustrated that sometimes they think about getting out. If we can listen to these personal challenges, it helps build customer loyalty.”
Ms. Milley is still active in groups that help wounded veterans and their families. And she has close relationships with many people across the country.
“She is the first lady of our American military, and yet you might think she is just a friend,” said Bonnie Carroll, founder of the nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.
One such case is Captain Luis Avila, who was in a coma for 40 days and was almost completely paralyzed after his vehicle hit an explosive device in Afghanistan in 2011. He sang “God Bless America” at General Milley’s swearing-in ceremony, and he plans to sing the national anthem at his farewell ceremony. His wife, Claudia, calls Ms. Milley a “mentor” and an “angel” for her humility in serving families like theirs.
“She never told anyone who she was,” Ms. Avila said of Ms. Milley’s visits to Walter Reed, the military medical center. “You used to always be alone. But she never came alone. She came with cookies.”
Ms. Milley credits her mother Margaret, who earned her own nursing degree after breast cancer treatment in her 30s, with inspiring her to become a nurse. When Margaret was diagnosed, 15-year-old Hollyanne Haas became her mother’s primary caregiver and helped raise her younger sister. Her mother’s cancer recurred at age 49 and she died a year later.
Hollyanne met Mark four decades ago in Key West, Florida and married two years later in 1985. The couple has a son, a daughter and three grandchildren. As this phase of their lives draws to a close, they regret not being around Washington enough and not being able to be as close as they would have liked to many of the friends they met throughout their careers.
“I regret that we as a family did not have more time during all of these missions,” Ms. Milley said. “But we will do that in 45 days.”
When asked if she was counting down to her husband’s retirement, she laughed and turned to him.
“He keeps the countdown,” she said.