After nine years of exile, Richard built the family a house where they lived happily for eight years. In 1975, Richard and Mildred were driving home from the Bowling Green carnival on Sparta Road, when they were hit by a car driven by a drunk driver. Mildred was blinded in one eye and Richard was killed. Ray Green, driving behind them, saw it happen. Mildred lived out the rest of her life surrounded by family and friends in the house Richard built on Passing Road, Caroline County, Virginia. She died of pneumonia in 2008 at the age of sixty-eight.
In her obituary in the Washington Post (May 6, 2008), Mildred is quoted as having said,
“We each loved each other and got married.
We are not marrying the state.
The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants.”