Milford Franklin Stablein was born to Minnie L. (née Hodge) and Frank George Stablein, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Frank was the owner of Wholesale Meat & Jobbing, at 1512 Parade Street, in Erie. Milford graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York (cadet number 11833), with the class of 1940. He was then posted at Fort Myer, Virginia. By early 1943 he was stationed at Fort Young, the Desert Training Center in the Mojave Desert. 
In November 1944 Stablein was assigned to the 6th Armored Division Headquarters as G-3 (in charge of division operations). On the insistence of Colonel John Leonard Hines, Jr. (USMA 1927), commanding officer of Combat Command A (CCA), to Major General Robert Walker Grow, Stablein replaced Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Godfrey as battalion commander of Combat Team 9 (9th Armored Infantry Battalion), on 12 November 1944. He was killed the next day. (He was succeeded by Lieutenant Colonel Frank K. Britton the following day.)
Stablein was leading CCA, with the 317th Infantry Regiment (of the 80th Infantry Division) supporting him, in an attack on the north bank of the river Rotte against the town Arraincourt. The lead vehicle of CCA had to stop because a culvert had been hit and blocked the road. Milford went to the head of the column to see what the delay was. Has he was moving between the road junction and the culvert a shell came in and he was hit with shrapnel and knocked into the ditch. Colonel Hines pulled him out the ditch and first put him on the deck of a tank, then moved him to a medical jeep, but as they got into the jeep Stablein succumb and died in Hines arms.
Milford was survived by his wife, Betty (1923-1994; of Elizabeth, New Jersey), daughter of Mildred and Frederic Gummick.
He was re-interred at the United States Military Academy Post Cemetery, West Point, New York in April of 1948.