Family and friends remembered outspoken, caring, idea-filled community activist Bruce Miller during a small memorial held at the Vet’s Club on Saturday evening.
Those who came shared their memories and expressed a sense of loss over the death of one of the community’s most active members.
“If he had written a novel of his life, it would have been one of the most interesting books you’d have ever read,” said Miller’s younger brother Bob Miller. “He lived on the East Coast, in the upper Midwest, but Eugene was very accepting of Bruce. He could thrive here.”
Miller died of a heart attack in
his apartment Tuesday morning. He was 62.
“He was very involved with students, almost like a father figure,” Programs Finance Committee member Jael Anker-Lagos said, with misty eyes and flowers in hand. “He gave a sense of reality to a lot of students.”
Miller’s life was filled with many trials and tribulations as he moved about the country embarking on different ventures.
“He went to New York to study to be a rabbi, but we knew it probably wouldn’t work out because he
didn’t speak Yiddish,” his youngest brother, Gordon Miller, said.
“He had a pretty tough life, but he would rebound somehow. Where some people would give up,
he didn’t.”
Miller graduated from Eastern Washington University with a degree in economics, spent one year in law school and served in the Marine Corps for four months before being discharged, Gordon Miller said.
Guests talked about Miller’s unending quest for the truth, his overflowing arsenal of ideas and the way he cared so deeply about the students at the University.
“He was an information hound. He would have been perfect
working for the CIA because he could absorb and track information just relentlessly,” longtime friend Brian Kenny said.
Former ASUO Constitution Court Chief Justice Randy Derrick said things won’t be the same on campus without Miller. Derrick enjoyed reading the manifestos Miller was known to write on his old manual typewriter and distribute among
select groups of students and other community members.
“One of the good things about him was that he would just say what was on his mind,” Derrick said. “He had a lot of really good ideas. Some of them were solid. There was a reason to listen to him.”
Derrick recalled having many “spirited discussions” with Miller. “Next year, (students) will come in who don’t know him, but they’ll know about him from people who have known him in the past. There will be stories about him. He will live on,” Derrick said.
Friend and fellow community activist Betsy Steffensen said her fondest memory of Miller was when he arranged for a group of University students to march at Autzen
Stadium during football games to protest the war.
“He had a degree of mental difficulty; he was challenged, but he did always challenge himself,” Steffensen said. “He would go and find out about what was happening, whether it was at the University, where he spent a lot of his time, or a political issue.”
She said he’d take his opinions and ideas to city council meetings, City Club meetings, the Democratic Party and University student
government.
“He thought that Mike Bellotti was managing the football team so well that, by God, he should be the city manager,” Steffensen said.
Kenny described Miller as a true humanitarian. “He was really moved by the tsunami and he thought the University should been more involved with the relief efforts because they have lots of
international students,” he said.
Not only was Miller interested in how the University spent student money, but he also thought a lot about downtown Eugene.
“He knew more about downtown business than the downtown
businesspeople did,” Kenny said.
In a book provided for friends to write their last words to Miller, CJ Mann thanked Miller for his “energy and excitement about politics and life.” She said Miller would rarely be seen without a bunch of articles and papers, always passing out copies and always wanting to share his information with others.
Miller was a man who wanted to live life “below the radar,” Kenny said. “His life philosophy was like the Jewish phrase ‘comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’”
