 "Don" Mitchell, a native of Central Upstate New York's Mohawk Valley, with ancestral family roots tracing back to the American Revolution, was born in Ilion, New York, in 1923.The oldest child of Donald J. Mitchell and Winnifred Packard Mitchell of Herkimer, New York, he attended the Herkimer Public School System, graduating in 1940 from Herkimer High School, which had been founded in 1899.In 1945, after returning home from his military service during World War II, Mitchell married Margaretta "Gretta" Wilson LeVee, the daughter of E. Allen LeVee and Margaret Tinker LeVee, of Little Falls, New York.