(President Miller delivered the following eulogy for his father at his "Celebration of Life" ceremony on Sunday, February 12, 2017, in Allen, Texas)
Dr. Rudolph “Rudy” P. Miller, Jr.
As a college president, I give dozens of speeches each year before crowds of all sizes. These comments today are the most difficult I’ve had to deliver in my life.
Our friend and my father Rudy Miller passed away on February 3, 2017, at Presbyterian Hospital in Plano, Texas. He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Iris Troutman Miller; daughter and son-in-law Pam and Ross Holman of Allen, Texas; son Scott and daughter-in-law Annie Miller of Virginia Beach, Virginia; granddaughters Katie Miller Sanders (husband Gary) of Winchester, Virginia, and Ashlee Miller Upp (husband Justin) of Dover, Delaware, and grandson Chris Holman (wife Wendi) of McKinney, Texas, and three great-grandchildren (Dylan Holman, Addison Sanders, and Abigail Upp). He is also survived by a brother, Kenneth J. Miller of Boothwyn, PA.
My dad grew up in Philadelphia, a second-generation German-American. He was the oldest son of a tool and die shop worker, Rudolph P. Miller, Sr., and homemaker Alice Rose Scott Smithson Miller. As a young man, he was active in Boys Scouts. He had tremendous pride in earning the honor of Eagle Scout, which is the highest achievement attainable in the Boy Scouts program, a rank only four percent of Scouts are granted.
He left high school early, misrepresenting his age to be eligible for enlistment in the military. He was a proud member of the United States Marine Corps and veteran of the Second World War, and he was particularly proud of the Purple Heart he earned for his service in Okinawa, Japan. But like so many of his “greatest generation,” when the fighting was over, he returned home and having done his duty, went on with his life, without complaint.
He finished high school at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical High School in the West Lehigh neighborhood of North Philadelphia. Afterward, he proudly enrolled as a first-generation college student at Swarthmore College with the intention of becoming an engineer. That summer, his life forever changed when he met our mother, Iris Troutman, a senior at Ridley Township High School who worked in the Swarthmore College pharmacy. That was the start of a beautiful relationship that would last for 70 years.
Iris started nursing school that following year at Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, now part of the Drexel University College of Medicine. Their relationship continued as she completed her nursing degree and he transferred to Millersville University to pursue a bachelor's degree in Education. My parents were married on June 2, 1951…several days after my father completed his degree.
Six years later, they welcomed my sister Pam into the world, and two years after that, I arrived.
My father would later complete his master's degree at Temple University and a doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh. Dad put those degrees to work as a lifetime educator. In 1952, he started a 26-year career as a public school teacher and progressed to multiple administrative positions for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. In 1978, he began his second career, teaching at the higher education level by accepting a professor’s position at Ohio University. He would go on to teach at the University of Memphis, followed by a 13-year tenure at East Tennessee State University.
Upon his retirement in 1996, he was designated “Professor-emeritus” at East Tennessee State. A former student established the Rudy Miller & Floyd Edwards Scholarship Endowment at ETSU—in honor, she says, of two professors who were transformational in her life. This scholarship continues today to benefit future students in the Clemmer College of Education.
Released from the demands of my father’s career, my parents gave much thought to their newfound freedom and ideal retirement community. They packed their bags and headed west to live near my sister, Pam, and her husband, Ross, and they have made many friends during their time here. My father proudly wore a cowboy hat, partly to shade him from the Texas sun, but also to fit in with the locals.
Because of the distance, our face-to-face visits would become less frequent, but we still made it a priority to talk on the phone three to five times per week. We talked about my own children, Katie and Ashlee, and their successes as students and athletes. We shared thoughts on politics—both national and higher-education-related. I will miss those phone calls more than I can say—the unspoken reassurance, unwavering support, and genuine interest that I believe, in many cases, only a parent can provide.
. . .
Last summer, our Texas family came east to visit us at our home on the Chesapeake Bay. An adventurous 89-year-old decided to take one of our kayaks off the back deck for a ride in the Chesapeake. He was doing well until a small boat wave toppled his boat, dunking him in the water. Ever the stalwart Marine, he bounced back up and continued what he was doing as if nothing had happened.
On December 6, 2016, just two months ago, family and friends celebrated his 90th birthday. I will be forever grateful that I was able to spend this milestone with him, and I can only hope that if and when I reach my 90th year, I will be just as lively and loving as he was.
My father was a man of faith; a Methodist most of his life, he was an active member of St. Andrews United Methodist Church. He was also extremely supportive of the Plano YMCA and served as a Board member there for many years. He loved their Marine Birthday Celebration, a tradition that featured the oldest and youngest Marines cutting the cake with a sabre. He was proud and appreciative of his many friendships at both St. Andrews and the Plano Y – and we’re so honored to have many of those friends here with us today. Thank you for coming.
He enjoyed taking part in the Honor Flight Program a couple of years back, a program created to honor World War II veterans for all their sacrifices. He was part of a small group of our heroes to visit Washington, D.C., to reflect at the monuments and memorials. Most recently, he was thrilled to be a participant in the Dallas Parade.
. . .
There is a special bond that a father has with a son. The bond builds over time through activities they share. I’d like to share a few of my favorite moments:
Dr. Rudolph “Rudy” P. Miller, Jr.
As a college president, I give dozens of speeches each year before crowds of all sizes. These comments today are the most difficult I’ve had to deliver in my life.
Our friend and my father Rudy Miller passed away on February 3, 2017, at Presbyterian Hospital in Plano, Texas. He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Iris Troutman Miller; daughter and son-in-law Pam and Ross Holman of Allen, Texas; son Scott and daughter-in-law Annie Miller of Virginia Beach, Virginia; granddaughters Katie Miller Sanders (husband Gary) of Winchester, Virginia, and Ashlee Miller Upp (husband Justin) of Dover, Delaware, and grandson Chris Holman (wife Wendi) of McKinney, Texas, and three great-grandchildren (Dylan Holman, Addison Sanders, and Abigail Upp). He is also survived by a brother, Kenneth J. Miller of Boothwyn, PA.
My dad grew up in Philadelphia, a second-generation German-American. He was the oldest son of a tool and die shop worker, Rudolph P. Miller, Sr., and homemaker Alice Rose Scott Smithson Miller. As a young man, he was active in Boys Scouts. He had tremendous pride in earning the honor of Eagle Scout, which is the highest achievement attainable in the Boy Scouts program, a rank only four percent of Scouts are granted.
He left high school early, misrepresenting his age to be eligible for enlistment in the military. He was a proud member of the United States Marine Corps and veteran of the Second World War, and he was particularly proud of the Purple Heart he earned for his service in Okinawa, Japan. But like so many of his “greatest generation,” when the fighting was over, he returned home and having done his duty, went on with his life, without complaint.
He finished high school at Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical High School in the West Lehigh neighborhood of North Philadelphia. Afterward, he proudly enrolled as a first-generation college student at Swarthmore College with the intention of becoming an engineer. That summer, his life forever changed when he met our mother, Iris Troutman, a senior at Ridley Township High School who worked in the Swarthmore College pharmacy. That was the start of a beautiful relationship that would last for 70 years.
Iris started nursing school that following year at Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, now part of the Drexel University College of Medicine. Their relationship continued as she completed her nursing degree and he transferred to Millersville University to pursue a bachelor's degree in Education. My parents were married on June 2, 1951…several days after my father completed his degree.
Six years later, they welcomed my sister Pam into the world, and two years after that, I arrived.
My father would later complete his master's degree at Temple University and a doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh. Dad put those degrees to work as a lifetime educator. In 1952, he started a 26-year career as a public school teacher and progressed to multiple administrative positions for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. In 1978, he began his second career, teaching at the higher education level by accepting a professor’s position at Ohio University. He would go on to teach at the University of Memphis, followed by a 13-year tenure at East Tennessee State University.
Upon his retirement in 1996, he was designated “Professor-emeritus” at East Tennessee State. A former student established the Rudy Miller & Floyd Edwards Scholarship Endowment at ETSU—in honor, she says, of two professors who were transformational in her life. This scholarship continues today to benefit future students in the Clemmer College of Education.
Released from the demands of my father’s career, my parents gave much thought to their newfound freedom and ideal retirement community. They packed their bags and headed west to live near my sister, Pam, and her husband, Ross, and they have made many friends during their time here. My father proudly wore a cowboy hat, partly to shade him from the Texas sun, but also to fit in with the locals.
Because of the distance, our face-to-face visits would become less frequent, but we still made it a priority to talk on the phone three to five times per week. We talked about my own children, Katie and Ashlee, and their successes as students and athletes. We shared thoughts on politics—both national and higher-education-related. I will miss those phone calls more than I can say—the unspoken reassurance, unwavering support, and genuine interest that I believe, in many cases, only a parent can provide.
. . .
Last summer, our Texas family came east to visit us at our home on the Chesapeake Bay. An adventurous 89-year-old decided to take one of our kayaks off the back deck for a ride in the Chesapeake. He was doing well until a small boat wave toppled his boat, dunking him in the water. Ever the stalwart Marine, he bounced back up and continued what he was doing as if nothing had happened.
On December 6, 2016, just two months ago, family and friends celebrated his 90th birthday. I will be forever grateful that I was able to spend this milestone with him, and I can only hope that if and when I reach my 90th year, I will be just as lively and loving as he was.
My father was a man of faith; a Methodist most of his life, he was an active member of St. Andrews United Methodist Church. He was also extremely supportive of the Plano YMCA and served as a Board member there for many years. He loved their Marine Birthday Celebration, a tradition that featured the oldest and youngest Marines cutting the cake with a sabre. He was proud and appreciative of his many friendships at both St. Andrews and the Plano Y – and we’re so honored to have many of those friends here with us today. Thank you for coming.
He enjoyed taking part in the Honor Flight Program a couple of years back, a program created to honor World War II veterans for all their sacrifices. He was part of a small group of our heroes to visit Washington, D.C., to reflect at the monuments and memorials. Most recently, he was thrilled to be a participant in the Dallas Parade.
. . .
There is a special bond that a father has with a son. The bond builds over time through activities they share. I’d like to share a few of my favorite moments:
- From his Boy Scout days, my dad loved camping in less-than-ideal conditions. We’d frequently go on weekend and summer Boy Scout camping trips and “rough it” in the woods—living in tents, cooking over a camp fire, and living like pioneers in sometimes horrible weather. He joked in recent years that our Boy Scout travels and camping together led to my interest in international travel and staying at Marriott Hotels and Resorts. Camping to me was staying at a Holiday Inn.
- My sister, Pam, also has many stories associated with Dad’s love of camping. Our old Apache Mess pop-up camper trailer went everywhere. In the 60s, it found a home in a muddy campground at Expo 67 in Montreal. My mom, Pam and I also fondly remember camping in a heavy lightning storm in Arlington, Virginia, as Dad hobnobbed with the late President Lyndon Johnson and his Cabinet Secretary Dean Rusk in Washington, D.C., a few short miles away.
- Pam and I remember as kids his woodworking projects, his love of model trains, hand-built furniture and playhouses for his grandchildren.
- When he was pursuing his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1970s, he would often take us along for the two-hour drive from Edinboro to Pittsburgh – dropping us off at the stadium for a Pirates game while he headed to the Pitt library. My love of baseball and expectation of earning a doctorate are a direct result of those excursions.
- My dad truly recognized the importance of family and never wanted his education or career to stand in the way of watching us grow up. I remember many times when we lived in Doylestown and Edinboro that he took me along to weekend meetings and presentations. My instructions were simple: sit in the back of the room, keep quiet, and take careful notes. On the drive home, he told me, we’d discuss my observations. When I became a college president at the age of 31, many people asked how I had such significant administrative experience at an early age. I know that tagging along with my dad planted those seeds, and I am grateful to have had the best mentor a young man could ever hope for. I have instilled these same values in my own children, and for that, I know my father was proud.
- My dad took special pride when I became a college president in 1991, saying that I had all the attributes for success: hard work, self-motivation, perseverance, attention to detail, ability to listen and act, rebounding from setbacks, never making the same mistake twice. All these attributes matched perfectly with him.
An avid reader, he favored a recent book. It’s called “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz.
The Four Agreements:
First, Be Impeccable with Your Word
Second, Don’t Take Anything Personally
Third, Don’t Make Assumptions
Fourth, Always Do Your Best
Those four “agreements” are truly the attributes that he himself sought to live by, and which he would no doubt recommend to others.
Among the hundreds of emails, texts and cards that we’ve received since Dad’s passing, one in particular sticks out. Dr. Terry Lindvall is a the C.S. Lewis Endowed Chair in Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan. He wrote: “My dad died around the same age as yours and also proudly fought in World War II like yours. You and I are truly blessed to have been the children of that ‘Greatest Generation,’ men of integrity, fortitude, and faith.”
I believe it was my father’s German ancestry and patriotism that contributed to his unrelenting work ethic and tireless self-motivation, his love of family, and his service to his community and our country. He shared with many of his time an unflinching commitment to the values that he practiced with a kind of humility and acceptance that seems rare now in a more self-indulgent age. He would be the first to say that life is about change and that education is a series of signposts that guide our inevitable progress. In his 90 years he never lost faith in the capacity of education to be transformational. He also knew that each of us had a responsibility to determine how best to stay grounded, resisting the temptation to give in or give up.
It was how a man who had traveled many miles and seen many things always found his way back home to family, to loyalty and responsibility that spoke to something basic yet profound in his character...something that a man who was born to teach could count among his richest lessons to others. This member of the "greatest generation" empowered me and countless others through our careers to regard each rising generation as the next greatest one, worthy of our devotion, care, and respect. That he was more gentle, sweeter, more patient than one might suppose a combat veteran of his experience to be simply added to his own quiet magnetism, his enduring influence, and his precious legacy to me as a father and fellow educator.
I can never repay him personally for these great gifts. I can only be a witness as long as I live to the good that he has left behind, and carry it forward—a steward of all that he himself stood for. That is all any of us can do when we have fathers such as my own, on a journey they have begun for us and which we must find the strength and courage—heartbroken as we may be—to continue without them.
That would make my father proud, but no more so than I am of him.
