Verda Colleen Miller was born on April 21, 1931. Colleen, as she was known, was born and raised in rural Kansas. Her father was what they used to call a cad or a scamp who was pretty much never around. She found out later in life that her father had a couple of other families in different parts of the country. Her mother was young and was a bit of a “rolling stone” herself so Colleen was mostly raised by her aunts in the tiny little hamlet of Miltonvale, Kansas. After high school she moved to Enid, Oklahoma to attend a business school. There she met Everett Miller (sound familiar?) and they married in 1950. They lived on the Miller family wheat farm and raised four children (including my dad Lee) while also raising crops and animals. While Everett was more of a joker, Colleen was very stern with the kids and made them toe the line. Sometimes, perhaps to get away from it all, she used to like to go walking through a small orchard on the family land. After all four of the kids were grown and out of the house, the marriage disintegrated and, after being a farm wife and mother for three decades, she was on her own. Everett remarried soon after the divorce and died just a few years later of pancreatic cancer. Both of them must have been somewhere around 50 years old when they divorced. Colleen asked, “What now?” She did what every 50-year-old does (read sarcasm); she went to college. She enrolled at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, a small liberal arts college (that doesn’t exist anymore) affiliated with the Disciples of Christ denomination. She got a degree in sociology. “What now?” she asked. “Grad school!” She enrolled in the school of social work at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. She graduated and became a licensed medical social worker, taking a position on the birthing floor at the University of Oklahoma Hospital in Oklahoma City. She did a lot of work with incarcerated mothers, impoverished mothers, drug addicted mothers, etc. All this time I really didn’t know her that well as I was a kid growing up in South Carolina. I’d spent a little bit of time with her, received a one dollar bill for every birthday and talked to her on the phone at Christmas, but that was about it.
When I moved to Oklahoma in high school I started to spend some more time with her on breaks from school. She lived in an apartment in a high rise building in downtown Oklahoma City. Whenever I visited her I slept on her red velour couch. She always called it a “divan,” which is a word I’d never heard and sounded quite fancy. Also, Granny liked computers. She had the internet before I’d ever even seen it before, and she immediately started using it to do genealogy. I loved going out on her balcony at night to see all the city lights. I got to know her fairly well during those times, although I never appreciated her. What I remember most about those years was her little “briefcase.” Granny was quite short, maybe 5’0”, and she had to carry a little cassette tape case with her everywhere she went. It looked like a little briefcase. It was to put on the floor to place her feet on in a restaurant or at the movies because otherwise her feet wouldn’t touch the floor and it hurt her back. She was a breast cancer survivor and she had osteoporosis, heart disease, and severe sciatica. She was in pain a great deal of the time. Oftentimes I was given the job of carrying her little “briefcase” when I was with her. As a teenager I hated that and cared too much about what other random strangers might think of me. I did it, though, because Granny could get pretty grumpy. My cousins and I still talk about how she would tear into a waiter if they got her order wrong. Because of her health she had to be very particular about her food. As long as you weren’t a waiter, though, she was a very kind person.
On the morning of April 19, 1995, while I was a couple of hours away in the town where I went to high school, Granny went to work as she always did. The hospital was just a few miles from her high rise apartment. While she was in the elevator at work at 9:01 am the elevator jolted and there was a loud boom. She got off at her floor and found out in the coming hours that the unthinkable had happened—a Ryder truck filled with homemade explosives had been ignited at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building less than two miles away in downtown Oklahoma City, later finding that 168 people had died. Granny worked throughout the day and coming days as patients came through the doors of the hospital. Also, in that split second that it took that bomb to ignite, my Granny became homeless. Her apartment building was across the street from the Murrah Building. The building had cracked and every window on her side was blown out imbedding glass into everything she owned. She lost pretty much everything. She had to start over… again.
She finally decided to retire and she moved to Norman where she had two daughters, a son-in-law, and three grandsons living. She got a little apartment not far from the OU campus. That was a factor in my deciding to attend the University of Oklahoma. I later transferred to Oklahoma State. During those two years at OU, I spent a lot of time at Granny’s apartment. We ate Arby’s together and she always had Sprite in the fridge because she knew it was my favorite. We watched Animal Planet together and she loved her little parakeet Petey (I think that was his name). They had lengthy conversations together. Eventually, after an accident, she had to give up her green Ford Escort and start using a scooter that she named Blue. She would ride Blue across the street to the grocery store and through the neighborhood to St. Stephen's United Methodist Church where she became a very active member in her later years. She was one of my best friends during the first two years of college, which were very rough for me. I had a lot of trouble making friends but Granny was always there for me. She didn’t always tell me what I wanted to hear but she was always there. During those years I had no idea how poor she was financially. I didn’t realize that until I mentioned to one of my aunts that I was going to ask Granny for a loan to help me out with school. She’d been so generous to me that I assumed she had a bunch of money. My aunt informed me of the actual situation and I never asked for the money, which is good because Granny probably would have given it.
Before the fall of 1998 I decided to transfer to Oklahoma State University about 90 minutes away. I later found out that this grieved my Granny deeply. I graduated, got married, Danielle graduated, and then we moved to Austin, Texas for me to attend seminary. I didn’t call Granny as much as I should have but when I did she was always glad to hear from me. In the spring of 2005 I headed up to Oklahoma to meet with some folks about doing an internship in a small Oklahoma town about an hour from Norman. I was excited that I’d get to reunite with Granny on a regular basis, at least for ten weeks. The night before the meeting, I slept on Granny’s pull out couch (the old divan had been destroyed in the bombing). I opened the fridge and there was a can of Sprite waiting for me and we had Arby’s for supper. Granny had lost a lot of weight since I’d seen her, and her sciatic nerve pain was excruciating. She told me several times how much she loved me and how proud of me she was. Also, that night she handed me a $1,000 check and told me that she wanted Danielle and me to have it. I tried to refuse but she wouldn’t let me. I didn’t know where she’d gotten $1,000. The next morning it was really cold and I didn’t have a coat with me as I was used to Austin. She made me put on her pastel blue and pink Southwestern print fleece jacket. She hugged me extra long and stood in the doorway and waved as I pulled out of the parking spot. That was in April. On Wednesday, May 18, just a couple of weeks before I was to move up to Oklahoma for the summer, my dad called me to tell me that Granny had died in her sleep. I wasn’t surprised but I was devastated.
When Granny died she was really just my Granny, but as I matured and experienced more in my life, through my memories of her and stories told by others, she became not just my Granny, but my hero. I will give you four quick reasons why Colleen became my hero.
Colleen was an avid lifelong learner. She read constantly and when her eyes went bad she listened to books on tape. She learned how to use the computer at an age when most people wouldn’t bother. She kept me supplied with books, often taking me to Borders or Barnes & Noble and letting me pick out a book for her to buy for me. She also started volunteering with a theater company in Oklahoma City. It was something she’d always wanted to do. She loved the theater. Her curiosity was insatiable and no subject was outside of her interests. I’m a lot like her in that way. When she died she was enrolled in a conversational Spanish course through her church. What she planned to use that Spanish for I have no idea. She probably just wanted to learn it. That’s one reason she is my hero.
Colleen served others in the midst of her suffering. My Grandpa had left her, so she went to school to learn how to help others. She was in physical pain all the time, yet she’d take us out to eat or to the movies. She suffered from depression yet she helped young women through some terribly depressing situations. She lost everything she owned, yet she helped others who’d lost someone they loved. She complained much less than I would have, and she served much more than I would have too. She even donated her body for medical research to help medical students learn to become doctors. That’s another reason she is my hero.
Colleen was a very spiritual person. After her divorce she eventually became a Roman Catholic, going through all that entails. I actually have her confirmation stole in my office. She eventually left the Catholic Church, though, because although she loved deeply the liturgy and pageantry of the Catholic Church she simply couldn’t abide any longer the Catholic Church’s views on several issues such as homosexuality and the role of women in ministry. I remember asking Granny once, “What’s the Holy Spirit like?” She thought for a moment and then responded, “The way I experience the Holy Spirit is like a jar of warm oil being poured over my head.” I’ve obviously never forgot that. She studied the Bible and prayed and served as long as she could. She had a quiet spirituality about her but she was always willing to talk about it if I asked. That’s another reason she is my hero.
When she finally found the church where she felt she belonged, it was St. Stephen’s Methodist Church in Norman. She loved St. Stephen’s. St. Stephen’s motto is “Where all are welcome.” They describe themselves as “a progressive Christian church that is open and affirming of all ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, economic brackets and walks of life.” At the time, and in some ways still today, it was the only congregation in Norman that took all comers and took them as they were. Whatever venom she didn’t use on waiters who didn’t get her seventeen substitutions right, she would put into someone whom she felt was a bigot. My Granny was fierce in defending her open and affirming church. When I would raise my eyebrows about some things, she would often say something to me like “This isn’t about an issue; this is about a person. How would you want to be treated if you were that person?” At least by the last decade or so of her life, Colleen was the most accepting person I’ve ever met. Her memory encourages me to stretch my own acceptance. That’s yet another reason she is my hero.
After Granny’s death, and after her ashes were returned to us, we took half of them up to the old orchard where she used to walk and watch birds. My son Wyatt, who is now six and never got to meet her, was just starting to walk at the time. It was a really windy day in northern Oklahoma. My uncle stepped over the barbed wire fence and avoided cow patties to spread her ashes out. Right at the moment he released them, the wind shifted and blew Granny all over his face. He came back wiping his face off and laughing. “Granny’s revenge!” we called it. The other half of her ashes was placed in the columbarium in the courtyard of her beloved St. Stephen’s Methodist Church. I was able to be a part of that simple committal service as well. I miss her every single day. She wasn’t just my Granny. She was my friend. She was my mentor. She was my hero.
By the way, my three-year-old daughter’s name is Josselyn Colleen Miller. She hasn’t started yelling at waiters yet, but like her great-grandmother, her curiosity is insatiable.
May the peace of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit fill your week.
Pastor Everett
