RICHARD WILLIAM MILLER, who always went by the name of “Dick”, was born in San Francisco California on May 2, 1908 to William Otis Miller and Alma Amelia Hextrum Miller. He was the youngest of three brothers and they were raised in Marin north of San Francisco.
Seldovia resident Mike Miller relates that when his dad was about 18 years old he made an agreement with his father. His father had some property in La Honda, California and Dick promised that he would build him a house if his father would send him to flying school. So Dick built a house of redwood logs that is still standing and then he enrolled in Hancock Foundation College of Aeronautics, studying to become an airplane pilot.
“Well, here it is after bed check Sunday nite, in the study hall and I must look like I’ve gone through a young war. What a hell of a week end I’ve spent. Broke all previous records for studying. I’ve ben at it from 1 pm Saturday til 3 am Sunday morning and from 8 Sunday til Monday at 12 o’clock working on one damned aerodynamic problem. Only took time out to eat and sit on the toilet to meditate. Finally got it, though. That damned incentive sure keeps me working overtime.
Wot a life, wot a life. Ya work like hell for something (all same A rating) and when you’ve finally got it, damned if you can ease down and take a rest. Instead, you have to work twice as hard to keep the amend thing. Don’t know the course to figure in our relative wind velocity, area of wing, center of pressure travel, aspect ratio, area of tail surfaces, thrust line angle of attack, angle of incidence, etc. As these later are unknown quantities it is necessary to work each one out separately. It is easily seen now that the next step is to find the down load on the tail surfaces in the opposed direction of rotation so as to gain equilibrium or dynamic stability. Arithmetically, this can’t be done but by using a little trigonometry to fin your angles, I haven’t the slightest doubt but what you’ll have no trouble at all. This problem is to be handed in tomorrow without fail. I believe I’ve gone over it very thoroughly, now are there any questions? You ask him a question and he’ll say “Pardon me but I believe I’ll digress from the subject somewhat and bring up a point that might be of some help to you when you et into the higher aerodynamics.” Where I’ll end up but it will either make a first class pilot out of me or I’ll be the nuttiest nut some nut house has ever seen. The hell of it is that when I’m handed one of the high faluting problems, before I do anything at all I have get some textbooks on arithmetic and find out how to work decimals, fractions, etc. When I get past that point in the problem I have to run and get books on transposing, geometry etc. Then information on plotting different “moments” on graph paper. When I finally get the god damned thing worked I’ve read every damned textbook in the school.
The prof will get up in class and explain a problem like this: “Now you see, to find the lower arm of the fuselage over the center of gravity you simply solve for x and transpose as in necessary. Then it is necessary..” Hell – you know, he turns out to be just about as useful as the motorcycle instruction book that Ott (brother) and I had when we were a hundred miles from nowhere and had a busted motor. It said, “If motor will not start, take same to nearest Harley Davidson Motorcycle shop.” But then its just a case of poop or get off the pot, and I manage to struggle along somehow. They say that to work hard will keep you out of mischief but its hell when in a peaceful faming community like this there is no place to et into mischief for 100 miles in any direction.
About that time Grace Gleason was arriving in California. She had been born on December 18, 1907 in Box Elder, Utah and she was of Mormon stock, although her family weren’t practicing Mormons. Her cousin had come to California before her and had married Dick’s older brother, so they invited Grace to stay with them. Grace worked as a long distance telephone operator in San Rafael. She and Dick were married and lived in the house he built in La Honda while he commuted to San Francisco for work.
It was difficult to get any flying jobs during the Depression so Dick and a friend went to work on the Oakland Bay Bridge, and then the Golden Gate Bridge. He was on a barge under the Golden Gate Bridge lifting some heavy steel that fell and crushed his toes.
So both he and his friend Ed quit and moved on to Seattle and got on a boat called The Discovery. It was a mail boat that used to run out of Seward and up Cook Inlet. They arrived in Seward in 1937, and were still not able to find any flying jobs. But they did eventually get a job in Candle, on the north side of the Seward Peninsula. There was quite a bit of gold mining there and they got a job putting in access roads into the mines. They worked one summer there and returned to California where they both had families. The next summer Dick returned to Alaska and was finally able to get a job flying out of Anchorage. He brought the family to Anchorage and was based out of there from 1937 until 1945.
During that time he also taught flying lessons and taught almost 2,000 people to fly, including famous Denali bush pilot Don Sheldon.
In 1945, the year that Seldovia was incorporated as a “Second Class City”, it also saw its first airplane service: Seldovia Air Service with owner Dick Miller piloting a 6-passenger, double wing Waco float plane. The plane was tethered to the Seldovia dock. Harry White, a pilot living in Kenai asked Dick to fly his plane and base out of Seldovia for the summer. The family moved to Seldovia and lived in the old Beachcomber Hotel. Dick had the airplane on a running line right down on the beach in front of the hotel. It was quite a busy operation in those days because there were four salmon canneries and they were always flying people in and out. There was no airfield in Seldovia but when Beluga Lake was created in Homer it became possible for floatplane travel between Seldovia and Homer. In 1947, Dick and a partner, Earl Herr, bought a plane from Arnold Air Service in Anchorage. Later that year they sold it to Merrill Ward Henington. More than $4000 had been paid on the purchase price by Henington when, on January 30, 1948, the plane disappeared from its ramp on the shore of Seldovia Harbor. Some time later a wing float, identified as from that type of plane, was brought to Seldovia and it was reported that it had washed ashore about 10 miles from Seldovia.
Dick flew Harry White’s plane for two seasons and then bought his own plane – a Stinson, a big radial engine on floats. During his second season with that plane he was hauling gasoline in 5 gallon Blazo boxes up to Jakolof Bay. He landed and taxied up to the beach, and jumped out to get someone to help him unload the gas. He was away from the plane when it suddenly exploded and burned up immediately. After that Dick flew for several years but never owned another plane. One of the planes he flew was a Seabee Republic, an amphibious aircraft. Then Dick and Carl Nordenson, who was a commercial fisherman and owned the Linwood Bar at the time, bought a three-seater Tri-Pacer. Dick flew that plane back and forth to Homer for $8 each way. Then Alaska Airlines came in and dropped the price to $6 and that was the end of Dick’s flying. Flying was really important to him, but by then he had come to love Seldovia and just didn’t want to pack up and leave. Dick flew out of Seldovia between 1945 and 1950.
Next Dick became a loft foreman for Al Villa at the Alaska Shellfish Company. That fall he became Chief of Police for the City of Seldovia. It wasn’t a great paying job for a family man so he supplemented by being the winter watchman at Alaska Year Round Canneries (AYR). There was a house on the premises where the family could live and eat food left over in the commissary.
Grace worked in Tyndle Lipke’s dress shop and in Frank Raby’s store for a number of years.
In 1956, Dick died of cancer and the family moved back to Mill Valley, California. Grace returned to Alaska one summer with both children and they all went to Kodiak and fished with Fleming Giles. She stayed in California until she died in 1979.
Memorial stones for both Dick and Grace are in the Seldovia City Cemetery, plots #71 and #72.