Florence Julia (Nemeth) Mikula

Florence Julia Mikula passed away on December 12, 2025, at the impressively long age of 95 years.

A true working-class Pittsburgh girl, she was born on May 10, 1930, to first-generation Eastern European immigrants Joseph and Mary Nemeth and along with her brother William resided in Southside and Hazelwood before moving to the South Hills where she lived for most of her life.

After graduating from Taylor Alderdice High School in 1948, she worked a variety of secretarial jobs before her marriage to Louis Edward Sims, a union that led to a sojourn in New England followed by the births of her first two children, Leslie and David.

Necessity took her back to the workforce, this time as a lead secretary for a downtown firm of three and there, at lunchtime, under Kaufman’s clock in the winter, she met her old high school friend Francis John Mikula. They soon married and she later gave birth to two more sons, Francis and Robert. Cancer robbed her of her second husband at the age of 49, and she never remarried.

A strong, independent and self-reliant woman, Flo loved flowers and birds and for many years tended to several cats, at least one of which she nursed back to health after it had been injured and abandoned. She enjoyed combing through the aisles of thrift stores, listening to music, and tucking back her blonde hair while driving sporty red cars, often saying that her nickname should have been “Wheels.”

In the waning years of her life, she once more returned to work, this time as an aid for the Allegheny County Office of Aging, where she tended to the needs of many elderly people, just as she had done for her own mother, who also lived into her 90’s.

Until the final years of her life, Flo J. maintained a close network of friends and neighbors, all of whom appreciated her laughter, smiles and kind disposition.

In addition to her four children, she is survived by ten grandchildren and eight great grandchildren, including a baby girl due to arrive in January of 2026.

Florence Juia was a woman who left her mark upon the world.

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