Robbie Mills name back on top (NHX)

by John Koziol

The Citizen of Laconia

LACONIA — With his mother looking on, the memory of Robbie Mills was duly acknowledged Tuesday by Laconia Savings Bank, which addressed a misperception by making it clear that the baseball diamond where the Laconia Muskrats play is Robbie Mills Field, as it always was.

Mills, who would have been 26 this year, was killed downtown in 1998 by two men who wanted his bicycle. The City of Laconia decided to remember the slain student by naming an athletic facility after him.

Known as the Robbie Mills Sports Complex, the facility includes a baseball field, bleachers, press box, paved parking and concessions as well as an adjacent soccer/lacrosse field. It was developed on state land at the corner of Meredith Center and Eastman roads on which the city has a very long term, almost no-cost lease.

Last year, Noah Crane and his family approached the city about moving a team from the New England Collegiate Baseball League to Robbie Mills and the city — along with Laconia Savings and the Cranes — pitched in together to renovate and expand the baseball field to accommodate the wooden-bat NECBL.

The sign above the Muskrats' scoreboard reads "Robbie Mills Sports Complex" but a sign between two granite posts on the left side of the entry to the parking lot until recently greeted visitors to "Laconia Savings Bank Field".

The new sign declares that it is now "Robbie Mills Field / Sponsored by Laconia Savings Bank," a resolution that Wendy Mills said she liked and was grateful for even though she acknowledged that she knew LSB meant no disrespect.

Mark Primeau, the bank's president and chief executive officer, personally offered the mea culpas to Mills, saying a "comedy of errors" resulted in the need to change the sign.

LSB is also replacing a second, existing Robbie Mills sign on the right side of the parking lot drive way, with a larger one, said Kevin Dunleavy, the director of the Laconia Parks and Recreation Department which maintains the complex. He was joined at the informal sign ceremony by City Manager Eileen Cabanel and LSB's Vickie Routhier.

Primeau hoped that the new sign would "rectify" LSB's error, telling Mills that he also hoped it would let the community know "that this was the field in honor of him (Robbie Mills).

Mills said she received several calls at home and work from some people who thought the original sign slighted her son's memory, adding that "the community felt the baseball field was Robbie's," as did LSB which quickly corrected the situation.

The ceremony had a serendipity moment when, after some photos were snapped of the new sign, a lady jogged by, introduced herself as a local and said she was impressed.

"This is the way it should have been from Day One," Primeau said of the Robbie Mills Field sign.