Milford Zornes was born in rural western Oklahoma, a few miles from the small town of Camargo. His father found farming and stock raising in the area difficult, and when young Milford was seven moved the family to Boise, Idaho. Though his mother, a former schoolteacher, taught him to draw as a child, it was not until his late teens, when the family moved to California, that Zornes received any formal training in art when he attended his last year of secondary school at San Fernando High School.After graduating from high school he decided to attempt a career in journalism, and began by selling photographs to various magazines, including Popular Science, Scientific American, and Popular Mechanics, and then received a few assignments to write articles. Advised that a journalist needed formal study, he moved to Santa Maria, California where he enrolled in what was then called Santa Maria Junior College. During his year there he took a room in the home of two art teachers who recognized his talent and encouraged him to become a painter, but he was resistant. Instead, he decided to study architecture, and he moved to San Francisco.
In 1927, he attended Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) where he studied with Millard Sheets and F. Tolles Chamberlin. He later taught at Otis. For 12 years he was art director for the Padua Hills Theater in Claremont, California.
Zornes married Gloria Codd in 1935 and had one son, Franz. In 1942 he married Patricia Mary Palmer, and had one daughter, Maria Patricia. During World War II (1943–1945), Zornes served in the United States Army in China.
James Milford Zornes died from congestive heart failure on February 24, 2008 in his Claremont home. He was 100.
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