What’s In A Name? | by jack cashill
The Miller Family
Portrait: Included are Bob & Carol Miller; Dick & Bernadette
Miller; Mary Ann & Jack Hense and Martha & Charles Roult.
Bob & Carol’s children, including Matt and his wife Sandy and
their children Amber, Laura, Brad, Chris, Jeff and Andrew; Therese
and Richard Greene and their children Adam, Evan, Caitie and Daniel.
Dick & Bernadette’s children
include: Steve; Mark; Paul and his wife Kathy and their
children Sally, Molly, Scott and Grace; Anne and her husband Jim
Kindscher and their children Elizabeth, John, Sarah and David; Susan
and her husband Nicholas Schilling and their children Katherine,
Patrick, Nicholas, Megan and Christopher; Julie and her husband
Michael McCann and their children Emily, Brendan, Claire and Colin. Unable to attend are Bernadette and Dick’s children Richard; Michelle; James and his wife Krisann and their son Shamus; Steve’s wife Susan and their daughters Lucy and Maddie; and grandchildren Lauren and Allison Kindscher. Those unable to attend from Bob & Carol’s family are Sean and his wife Karen and their children Ryan, Shaughnessy, Keara and Siobhan; Marie Mayer and her son Joseph; and in spirit Rich and Therese’s son Richie. |
It’s All About The
Torch
Rightly told, the story of the
torch would begin, in this part of the world at least, with Bob and Dick
Miller’s grandparents. These
were ordinary folks the grandfathers were a scout for the Army at Fort
Leavenworth and a mechanic but they carried a torch of community
commitment and passed it on to their children and to their children’s
children. Were there words
inscribed on the torch, they would be these, "You should love the
Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul and your neighbor as
yourself."
It was 1985 when Bob Miller felt the heft of the torch and the responsibility of it. He was working out of a thatched hut in 105 or so degrees of heat on this, a relatively mild mid-winter Sudanese day. Around him were some of the 750,000 weary refugees who had fled war and famine in nearby Ethiopia. It was here, amidst this desperate mass of humanity, that Bob first fully realized how much he had been given and how much he had to share.
“It came to me how much I had to thank God,” says Bob, “for who we are, where we are and what we have.”
Bob and his colleagues had medical responsibility for four complete refugee camps. The organization, which he has served for over thirty years, twenty-plus as Chairman of the Board, is called Lalmba, “place of hope.” And hope is what Bob and his crew brought for at least some of the desperate souls around him.
Bob’s younger brother, Dick Miller, has carried the torch through his work with the various arts and medical and educational organizations of Greater Kansas City, and especially with his efforts in the inner cities. Indeed, he has spent many weeks over the last seventeen years helping rehabilitate houses through a stunningly successful program he helped co-found with John McMeel called “Christmas in October.” If this seems the easier assignment, it may not be by much. One of Dick’s volunteers, a student at Rockhurst University who had spent her summer working in the Appalachian Mountains, thought the homes she had seen here in Kansas City to be in more desperate shape than any she had seen in the hills and hollows of Appalachia.
“It’s amazing,” says Dick, “to see the conditions in which people live right here in Kansas City, I try to do something every day to help.”
The Millers’ deep sense of community derives from three primary sources. One is their Catholic faith. Indeed, Bob and his wife Carol and Dick and his wife Bernadette still make a point of attending mass every day, something they have done all of their lives.
The second source Bob and Dick share with only two other people, their sisters, Mary Ann Hense and Martha Roult. That source, of course, is their parents. Bob Sr. and Mary Tierney Miller moved from Leavenworth to Kansas City to pursue their dreams soon after World War I, and Kansas City has not been quite the same ever since.
The third source is the family Bob
and Dick have helped create, the wives who have sustained and encouraged
them, the children and grandchildren who have inspired them to pass the
torch on.
Home on Harrison
It was not so much that Bob and Dick’s father, Bob Sr., an attorney, preached to his children about community involvement. Rather, he showed by example. Perhaps his most enduring accomplishment was the creation of an organization called “Orphan Sponsors.” Although informally run, this program, as Dick Miller relates, was a “huge undertaking.” Its many volunteers mentored orphans through school and life. The message that Bob Sr. passed on to his children was simple: “Your God, your family, your country, your fellowman”. Today, Dick continues to meet men his age whose lives were turned around by the program.
“Every day,” says Dick, “Bob and I try to emulate our father. He was an incredible person.” Their mom, Mary, was equally passionate about giving back to the community. In addition to raising four children, she volunteered for school and church activities and was still helping at the Seton Center until her death.
Bob and Dick, just three years apart, grew up in this loving home in the then intimate neighborhood around Rockhurst University. In a metaphorical sense, Bob and Dick have stayed close to Rockhurst throughout their lives. Dick was on the initial Board of Trustees at the University and served as Vice-Chair for 10 years and as Alumni President. As to Bob, it was at a Rockhurst College alumni barbecue that he first met Carol, his wife of 42 years. For 33 years, Bob taught night school at the college just as his father had. For many years he has served on its Board of Regents.
The responsibility of upholding the family legacy is one of many that Bob gladly undertakes in his relatively new role as Senior Vice-President of Community Affairs for the Robert E. Miller Insurance Agency. To Bob, his insurance agency has had the primary purpose of helping him sustain his four children. Now, it is up to Bob’s sons, Matt and Sean, to sustain their ten children (combined) through their work at the agency and to continue the Miller family traditions. Sean, 41, serves as the Board’s Chairman, and Matt, at 38, serves as its President.
Dick serves as president of the Miller Law Firm, a ten-lawyer firm that he founded 38 years ago. The firm specializes in commercial litigation, representing contractors, banks, and a variety of privately owned businesses throughout the United States. Dick has yet to ease up. He continues with his son and partner, Steve, to try major cases all over the country.
With the decision-making handed over to the next generation, Bob’s business ventures have been as diverse as growing bamboo in Honduras, serving as an investor/board member in the Pony Express Brewery in Olathe, and most currently, working with his sons and others building new homes for the severely handicapped in Tennessee. He is also looking at a very low key auto agency, mostly for the purpose of working with Bishop Sullivan Center and its automobile program.
In lesser firms, “Community Affairs” is little more than a glorified form of PR. At the Robert E. Miller Insurance Agency, community affairs are part and parcel of what the Millers and their insurance agency stand for. Bob deeply involves himself in projects that range from his neighborhood to the nether reaches of the world. As the owner of a small business, he gravitates to those charities through which one man can make a real difference, especially one whose organizational and management skills have been honed in the rough-and-tumble world of free enterprise.
Bob Miller is co-founder and a board member of the Spirit of Service organization that brings together leaders of various religious denominations for training and fellowship. He is on the board of Surplus Exchange, an organization which secures underused business properties for 501 C-3’s. He is also on the board of Benilde Hall, an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program, and actively assists with its new building program and the doubling of their capacity. In addition, Bob serves the Benedictines at Conception, both on the board of the college and on their financial advisory councils.
Bob Miller holds a 22lb. 3-year old African child who died the following week of malnutrition and medical complications. |
Three generations of Millers include (l-r) Brad, Matt, Sean and Bob. |
Africa has not been Bob’s only exotic posting. He has been to Guatemala and other Central American countries with his parish church group and the CFCA (Christian Foundation for Children & Aged), as well as on mercy ships. He has worked with the Jesuits here and in El Salvador as well as with the Redemptorists in the renovation of their Kansas City Church. In conjunction with the Serras and the Redemptorists, he has assisted in the building of a chapel in Northern Thailand. He hopes to help build one in communist Myanmar. He has also been deeply involved with Water Partners International, a not-for-profit organization whose mission it is to bring fresh water to third world countries, Heart to Heart, and MACLA, (Medical Aid to Children of Latin America).
His activities and travels have also seen him working with the Franciscans in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia and various and sundry other ventures in many parts of the world. But as he says “Having a wife in the travel business certainly doesn’t hurt.”
Although the brothers do not typically coordinate their respective charitable efforts, Bob’s firm has been there from the start of Christmas In October. As Bob describes it “I have been all over the map and spread too thin, while Dick has had the laser vision to build the largest charitable home rehab program of its kind in the United States.”
Given Dick Miller’s work schedule, it is hard to believe he can help manage a program as extensive and ambitious as Christmas In October. This program, now 17 years old, has grown from a few hardy volunteers to a crew of over 6,500 unskilled and skilled volunteers. In the year 2000 alone 422 houses and 5 community centers were rehabilitated and remodeled and this with but one paid staff person.
Nor is the work superficial. The rehab includes heating, cooling, plumbing, electric and other costly infrastructure repairs. To make these repairs, the program must solicit and manage some $350,000 worth of supplies on an annual basis. This has taken a yeoman’s effort on Dick’s part, and his efforts paid off again this year with the 5,000th house rehabbed through the program. In fact, the value of the labor and materials donated in a given year exceeds $1 million.” In changing homes,” says Dick, “we’re changing lives. Volunteers are attracted by the hands-on nature of the project.”
Christmas In October would seem work enough for most guys eligible for Social Security, but for Dick it’s just part of his routine. Dick, with the help of a few others, was
involved in starting the Duchesne Clinic in Kansas City, Kansas, which serves the medical needs of thousands of the poor and needy. He continues to coach youth football and help out in a variety of other programs. These have included serving on the Boards of Rockhurst University, the Lyric Opera, the Law Foundation, University of Missouri at Kansas City, St. Mary College, the Conservatory of Music, St. Joseph Health Center, and many more. For his efforts, he has received more honors than he has walls to put them on.
Still, when Dick compares himself
to those closest to him — his wife, his brother, his father, he sees
himself as “a turtle in a race with
greyhounds.”
A Committed Partnership
The great work in the life of Dick’s wife of 43 years, Bernadette, has been the raising of the couple’s nine children: Steve 42, Mark 41, Paul 40, Anne 39, Susan 36, Julie 34, Jim 32, Rich 30, and Michelle 25. Bernadette can reel off their ages and those of her grandchildren without hesitation and adds, “I always valued being a wife and a mother.” She is justifiably proud that all nine of her children have graduated from college, Catholic colleges at that.
Despite the demands of nine children and now 22 grandchildren, Bernadette serves as President of the Kansas City Symphony League and is an active volunteer with the Lyric Opera, Ladies of Charity, MOCSA, and Children’s Mercy Hospital. She and her children are deeply involved in a program called F.I.R.E. (Foundation for Inclusive Religious Education) that helps kids with special needs attend religious schools
Bernadette also commits much of her energy to the church as a Dame of Malta, as Lector and Lay Minister at Visitation Parish, and recently as co-chair of the National Catholic Charities Gala.
Says Dick of Bernadette, “She is so generous in taking care of the needs and wants of others, whether it be her children, grandchildren, friends, the elderly or the sick.”
Bernadette and Dick were recently requested by Bishop Boland to establish the Catholic Community Foundation and in a few short months helped raise more than $9 million. Bernadette and Dick co-chaired both the Jesuit Mission Drive and the drive to fund the Finucane Center at Rockhurst University.
Dick and Bernadette Miller at the open house for benefactors of the Children’s Campus. |
Each year, Bernadette and Dick travel to Lourdes to assist the very ill and infirm. Each Wednesday night, they host a rosary prayer service at their home for cancer patients. In order to help pass the torch to others, Bernadette and Dick have established scholarships in honor of Dick’s parents as such schools as Rockhurst University, St. Mary’s College and St. Teresa’s Academy.
Dick takes great satisfaction in knowing that his own nine children have welcomed the torch that he has handed on to them. All five of their sons have been involved in Christmas in October. Two of their daughters served as executive directors when they graduated from college. Dick & Bernadette’s children are also involved with Don Bosco, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Susan G. Komen Cancer Foundation, KU Cancer Institute, the Central City School Fund, F.I.R.E., BOTAR; Jewel Ball, the American Royal, KU Breast Cancer Research Fund, Franciscan Homeless Shelter, National Reach Out and Read, Literacy Advocates, Notre Dame Alumni Association and a wide variety of school and church activities.
One of their sons spent time in El Salvador working with the less fortunate. Another son spent a year working in the largest homeless shelter in Chicago as a volunteer. Another son donates half his income and half his company’s profit to the special charities with which he works. A daughter and her husband have just launched a national sales company and profits from sales of some of their products will go directly to a cancer research fund run by another daughter. Another daughter has worked in many capacities as a volunteer with the Catholic schools serving the central part of our city.
Bob Miller too acknowledges that none of his community work would be possible without the rock solid support of Carol, his wife of 42 years. Not only has she raised four children, now all grown, but she runs her own travel business. In the business, Carol has established something of a niche working with a number of 501 C-3 (not-for-profits), especially in the organization of pilgrimages.
The couple lives across the street from Avila College on whose board Carol sits and with which she is actively involved. Among her more ambitious and fun projects is the annual picnic she and Bob host to which all of the nuns in the Kansas City Metro area are invited. This usually falls within a week or two of the Conception Golf Tournament where tradition has it that golfers bring their spouses and others to barbecue at the Miller’s afterwards. The crowd usually runs between 200-250 hungry and thirsty guests.
Bob and Carol have four children, Sean and Matt live in Kansas City and daughters Therese Greene in suburban St. Louis and Marie Mayer in suburban Chicago. The four offspring have given Bob and Carol 16 grandchildren, ages 3 to 13, ten of whom reside in the Kansas City area.
With 10 children between them, and a business to run, Sean and Matt have their hands full. Still, they have not only been active in their churches, but have also spearheaded major capital drives Sean at St. Peters in Kansas City and Matt in the new St. Michael’s parish that will soon be built at143rd Street and Nall in south Leawood. They have also served on any number of boards and have helped their respective alma maters in fund raising. They and the other members of their extended family have also been active in a number of school, church and community projects in the metro Kansas City area for boys, and in the St. Louis and Chicago area for girls.
From the Top: Mary Ann & Jack Hense (left); Bob & Carol Miller (top); Martha & Jack Roult (right); and young Richard & Bernadette Miller (front). |
If space allowed, we could talk
about Bob’s and Dick’s sisters, Mary Ann
Hense and Martha Roult, their husbands and their 11 children, who share in
the family legacy as well.
The Torch is Passed
All of the Millers have received a great gift of faith and community from their parents the torch and passed it on to their children as the children will surely pass it on to theirs. Indeed, Bob and Dick take even more satisfaction in their children’s continued commitment to good works than they do in their careers.
Bob may be “preparing for his final exam,” as he half-jokingly describes his full time commitment to good works, but he is more than a student. He and Dick are teachers as well. Like their father, they teach by example. In all there are twenty-four children in the next generation and sixty-one grandchildren who will learn a great life lesson just by watching them. Such is the strength and value of family. Indeed, it is families like the Millers that make America work. Where would the nation be without them?