Tribute - In Memoriam

His given name was Richard, but people knew him by many others. His family called him Buddy. People that worked with him called him Dick. His friends knew him as Jack. I called him, Dad. He was my father.

He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a railroad man and a housewife, like any other. He had only one brother, younger than he, but a number of sisters, whom he cared for very much. He lost his own father to an accident on the railroad one night, while he was still a teenager. It forced him to grow up very quickly in the harsh setting of Hampden.

Dad did many things, as a young man. He was a boxer for a time (non professionally), he caddied golf, he studied to become a chef, anything he could do to make sure that Abby, his mother, and the rest of the family had food on the table. It wasn’t always easy, but he made the best of it. An evening out usually consisted of something as simple as the roller rink, where he once had the duty of entertaining three girls he’d made a date with on the same night. But he was good hearted and it all worked out.

Feeling a sense of duty, my father enlisted in the US Marine Corps, and was a Marine till his dying day, true to the Corps spirit. He served with honor, doing various duties, such as Military Police, and other jobs, but was lucky to have been enlisted between wars, so he never saw combat. This didn’t mean he was a quiet career man. A priest in the parish where he grew up told us that my father had once risked his life and saved three of his fellow Marines from drowning during a training exercise. He never mentioned it to the family, preferring to be just an ordinary Joe. He rose to the illustrious rank of E-5, a Sergeant several times, but never seemed to get the breaks to go higher.

My father left the Marines to start a new life, and became a sheet metal engineer. He had a talent for it, working for such places as Bendix, Bausch and Lomb, and Litton, as well as other large firms, bending metal in huge presses and punches for such grand things as the Space Shuttle, and small things like microwave ovens. Many of the projects he worked on he never spoke of. He developed such a strong sense of design that he could look at blueprints and tell you whether it could be done, and woe to the white-collar designer who ignored his advice. It usually ended up costing them in the end.

My father married, three times in his life. The first was well before I was born, to a woman from Baltimore. He later divorced, and drew the ire of the Catholic Church at the time. His second wife, Shirley, was my mother. With her, the family added four children: My sister Terry, my brother Richard Junior, myself, and my younger brother David. We had a happy life, until my mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was terminal, and on a grey cold day in December, 1973, she lost her fight, leaving a grieving man alone to raise four children.

My father never complained, nor did we ever see him regretful of his lot. He worked hard, harder than I ever knew. He tried his best to raise us right, and with good food and clothes on our backs, even though times got very hard a few instances. Dad worked and suffered and never let it show, giving my siblings and I the best life he could.

In my later teenage years, my father met a new lady, by the name of Jan, who, while quite a bit younger, seemed to be a good fit for him. They married, and my father included her two children, Jennifer and Steven, in our family. And the years went on. I left to join the service, my brother and sister married and moved out, and finally even my younger brother too, going off to college. My father and his now reduced family moved to New York, to be closer to Jan’s family.

Years went by, and Dad, a heavy smoker and other problems, required bypass surgery. It left his lower body paralyzed, in a wheelchair, in his sixties. I never heard him complain. He was a Marine, and Marines don’t complain. He still had two good arms and a sharp mind, and he lived his life to the fullest even then. Until two years ago, when a stroke brought him down a bit. The family rushed to his side, all of us, putting aside petty concerns. Dad was still going, though, fooling us all. He couldn’t speak very well, and was bed-ridden, but his mind was still alert and he still felt the joy of life.

Finally, on July 10, 2004, my father resigned his post. I think in my heart that his heart was finally just too tired to fight on, and he peacefully passed from this world, as I attended Anthrocon 2004. Even his wife, Jan, who’d stayed with him and cared for him was caught unexpected. But now, he was at peace.

I think that, in my heart, there will always be special moments that I remember. My father was a god to me. He was nine feet tall, made of solid oak, and could eat ten-penny nails for relaxation. He could always teach me something. He had a great love of history, and was deeply involved in the Civil War re-enactment societies, where he acted as Provost Marshall. I can still picture him, walking around in his “Corporal Agarn” hat, as he liked to call it, cutting a dashing figure. Some of the most rollicking times I had with him were on these trips.

I used to love to sit with him and hear the stories of his days in the Marines. He’d known so many people and seen so many things, and I regret not having tapes of all his wonderful stories to listen to. He taught me to play pinochle, and poker, and helped me through a couple years where I was sick in bed with a childhood illness. I could always count on a smile and a kind word from my father, who always called me “Charlie Brown.” It made me feel special. He is the one who inspired me to join the Air Force, for I’d have done anything to be like my father. And to make him proud. The finest thing he said to me in my life was at my wedding. He said he was proud of me and he loved me.

This is not to say he was perfect, not exactly. His parish priest told us at his service that whenever something happened at school, the first one they’d look for behind it was Buddy Miller. He was a little hellion, and proud of it (and I see a lot of him in my own son Alexander). He learned to fight because he’d be picked on in his neighborhood and get beat up, and then get a spanking from his own father for fighting. His logic was, at least he could win one fight.

Later in life, my father developed a drinking problem, after my mother died. It was one way of coping with what was a devastating loss, and now that I am older, I can understand why. He was not abusive, although he did like the physical in discipline, nor was he ever violent when he was drinking. But, it was a burden to him, nonetheless. In his later years, he joined AA, and tried his best to help others. That was the way my father was. He had a hand out for any who needed him.

I have many regrets about my father. When I left home, it was the result of a bitter argument, between a sad and wise old man and a stupid, foolish, arrogant youngster. I said things that to this day, I’d rather have parts of me ripped out with red hot pincers than to have said. The pain I caused him and the shame, I now ache over. He did not deserve the way I treated him, and in the end, I just thank God I got a chance to beg his forgiveness and tell him how much I loved him. He’d always been there, even for a foolish boy like me.

This snapshot of my father is hardly an atom in the ocean of what he was. I wish I could put down in words, all the memories, all the times good and bad, all the laughter and tears that make up my father. He was and always will be a good and kind soul, and may God smile on him wherever he is.

He was a god.

He was a man.

He was my father.

I love you, Dad.

Brian L. Miller, Editor in Chief