By Frederick N. Rasmussen , fred.rasmussen@baltsun.com|June 27, 2009
Gerald "Captain Jerry" Millman, a former used-car dealer and haberdasher who founded Captain Jerry's Custom T-shirts, died Sunday of kidney and heart failure at Sinai Hospital. He was 82.
Born in Baltimore, Mr. Millman was raised in the city's Pimlico neighborhood. After graduating from Forest Park High School, he served in the North Atlantic aboard the Coast Guard cutter Dexter.
After being discharged from the service, he established a used-car business in Brooklyn at Patapsco Avenue and Potee Street.
"He named the business after his old ship," said a son, Mark A. Millman, who lives in Pikesville. "After several years of operating the business there, the site was reclaimed and became an entrance for the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel."
He then went to work for his father, who established Gerald's Father and Son, a men's shop, in 1956 in the Ritchie Highway Shopping Center. They later expanded the business and added a store at the Westside Shopping Center and the Patterson Village Shopping Center in Northwest Baltimore.
While visiting Ithaca, N.Y., for a son's graduation from Cornell University in 1976, Mr. Millman observed a large gathering of students purchasing custom-made silk-screened T-shirts at a store.
"He was so impressed that he brought that silk screening technology back to Baltimore and established Captain Jerry's Custom T-shirts, which has become one of the largest silk-screening companies in the Middle-Atlantic region," his son said.
An irrepressible self-promoter, Mr. Millman reveled in passing out the T-shirts and hats that his firm produced.
"He was commonly known around Baltimore and Ocean City as Captain Jerry," his son said.
"Wherever he went, he always passed out Captain Jerry T-shirts and hats. Many of his customers included area politicians, including Gov. William Donald Schaefer and Mayor Kurt Schmoke, the NAACP and some of the area's largest advertising agencies," he said.
"Our days [together] go back [to] when we were kids growing up in Northwest Baltimore around Liberty Heights and Forest Park, and Jerry was always the nicest and sweetest guy," said Jack Luskin, former owner of Luskin's, the Baltimore-based appliance and electronics discount chain, who was known in his heyday as "The Cheapest Guy in Town."
"After he left the used-car and clothing business and got into T-shirts, Jerry brought a whole new dimension to it, which was new at the time," Mr. Luskin said.
