An interview in my study conducted by my son, G. Calvin Miller, on Feb. 3, 2008. Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Chz7VR0Wsw

Calvin: When did you decide that you wanted to become a writer? What do you think, growing up, influenced your decision to become a writer? Me: My mother used to sit me down, and I actually enjoyed this despite my other feelings about my mother, which we won't get into here. You can read the book. She used to sit me down, and we'd start through the dictionary, starting at A and go right through, and I don't think we ever finished, but I remember aardvark was the first word, and abalone was the second. But reading and writing were very important in my household, so that's where it came from. Calvin: Did you plan out how you were going to become a writer, or was it sort of a play -by -ear thing? Me; It was not planned out. It was serendipity, which is, I guess, another way of saying play by ear. It just kind of happened. But again, I always liked writing, so it wasn't a question of like I woke up one day and went, ooh, I think I like writing. Calvin: What was your first writing piece to ever be published? Me: It was a story about a blizzard in 1978, which was published in my very small hometown newspaper, the Wakefield Daily Item. And I was living in Boston at that time. And I wrote sort of an essay about what it was like being in Boston at that time, and it was a horrible piece of crap. I didn't start off. But they liked it, so. Actually, I did at the time. I read it now, as I have actually in the last few years, and it's like loaded with cliches. Calvin: You just answered three of my questions. Me: Well, there you go. We're moving right through this. The lead of that story was the plane sat at Logan like wounded dinosaurs. I remember that. It's like you can't get much worse than that. Calvin: How do you know what a wounded dinosaur looks like? Me: I have no idea. I'm just poetic. I told you it was awful. Not as bad as my high school poetry, which we won't ever get into, although I still have some of it. In one of these yearbooks, actually, I was like the poetry person. Calvin: Do you ever read your own writing for enjoyment? Me: No. Calvin: No? Me: No. Never. I mean, I'll read a newspaper piece after, but even in terms of books, no. I've never read one of my books. After the editing, obviously. Calvin: Well, then, do you believe that you're a good writer? Me: I think I'm a decent writer. I mean, I've had some success at it. You know, let other people decide. Calvin: Who do you look up to as a writer? Me: My immediate answer is Stephen King, who I've loved forever and ever since his second book. Actually, I didn't read his first. And there are a lot of non -fiction writers that I really admire, too. Jonathan Har is one of them. Richard Rhodes. Christopher Buckley. I could go on, but those are among the ones I like. Calvin: Why don't you write horror, then, if your favorite author is a horror writer? Me: My first book was a horror novel. But then I sort of got off into doing non -fiction books. But I actually wrote a horror story last summer. It wasn't bad. First one I'd written in a long time. Calvin: Do you enjoy writing non -fiction? Seems kind of boring to me. Me: I enjoy writing non -fiction. I enjoy it a lot. I probably like fiction better, but I'm not feeding you on my fiction, so let's put it that way. here's a money aspect to this. My fiction has never sold well, or at all. Some have sold it. Calvin: Have you ever started writing a book and then just decided that it wasn't worth it or it wasn't a good idea and stopped? Would you say that being a writer is easy or hard? Me: If it's your career path and you want to make money, don't go into it. You kind of don't choose it. I know that sounds groovy. Calvin: You feel you're compelled to do it. Do you honestly enjoy being a writer? Me: Yes. I can't imagine doing anything else except making films now. But that all is part of the same process. Calvin: What was your second choice if you failed becoming a writer? Me: I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. Calvin: And you chose writer? Me: I did. And here's what happened. My first week at college, I went to Harvard planning to be a neurosurgeon. My first week, I get into this upper-class creative writing course. And they let in one or two undergrads. You had to compete for it. And I got in. It was like, that was cool. And I looked at all the study it would take [in pre-med], all the science and statistics and biochemistry and stuff. I'm sure you think it's a bad career choice, given that you don't have a pony or something. Which I can't afford to buy. Do you want a pony? I don't think he wants a pony. Calvin: How do you think your life would be different if you'd never become a writer? Me: I'd be bored. I'm not bored very often. Calvin: I don't think being a neurosurgeon would be very boring. Me: Have you seen neurosurgery? Calvin: No. Me: I have. It's boring. And by the way, you have to be really good at it, or as the old saying goes, oops, there go the piano lessons. It's an old neurosurgical joke. But I have seen it several times, actually. The chief of neurosurgery at Children's Hospital and the Brigham and Women's Hospital [allowed me]. Calvin: Does the place or the atmosphere in which you write affect your writing? Like, say, writing in this room versus writing in a hospital? Me: Yes, absolutely. Yep, absolutely. I write best in this room, and I'm less productive elsewhere, especially in a newsroom where people are constantly talking. It's hard to write anything serious there, although you can write silly little -ass stuff. Calvin: What about your mood? Like, for example, how is your writing different when you're angry than when you're happy? Sometimes writing, like, can ease anger. Me: That's an interesting question. I never thought about it. Mood obviously affects the quality of what you're writing, but I've never really analyzed what mood leads to what quality of writing. Calvin: How has your writing changed throughout your life, like the style or the way in which you write? Me: I've gotten less cliched, and I've realized that I'm not a stylist. Some people are. I have a friend at the New York Times, Dan Barry, who's a great stylist. He can turn a phrase. I'm not good at that. So I realized that my strengths were sort of narrative and structure and detail. Calvin: What did you major in in college? Me: English. And other activities that we don't need to go into. English, by the way, is a great major for the other activities. It buys you time. Calvin: Do you think that your major, English, has significantly helped or altered your writing? Me: Yes. It deepened my appreciation for reading and literature and writing. Now, you can't learn how to be a good writer. Calvin: No, you can't. Me: And that's absolutely true. I think people who take writing courses and, you know, past a certain point, it's just bullsh**. The way to learn to write is to write and to read. Calvin: Have you ever tried writing poetry instead of prose? Me: Yes, in high school. I mentioned earlier, I won't embarrass myself, but it's awful. And I do respect poetry, but I certainly can't do it. Calvin: Why do you write? Me: Because you feel compelled. Because if I don't, I get antsy and weird. You do it to exorcise demons, maybe. Calvin: Well, thank you, Wayne. Me: Thank you, George Calvin. That would be my son.

Twenty-three years ago. RIP, Dad

 Author's Note: I wrote this 13 years ago, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of my father's death. Like his memory, it has withstood the test of time. I have slightly updated it for today, December 11, 2025, the 23nd anniversary of his death. Read the original here.

Roger L. Miller as a boy, early 1920s.

My Dad and Airplanes

by G. Wayne Miller

I live near an airport. Depending on wind direction and other variables, planes sometimes pass directly over my house as they climb into the sky. If I’m outside, I always look up, marveling at the wonder of flight. I’ve witnessed many amazing developments -- the end of the Cold War, the advent of the digital world, for example -- but except perhaps for space travel, which of course is rooted at Kitty Hawk, none can compare.

I also always think of my father, Roger L. Miller, who died 22 years ago today.

Dad was a boy on May 20, 1927, when Charles Lindbergh took off in a single-engine plane from a field near New York City. Thirty-three-and-a-half hours later, he landed in Paris. That boy from a small Massachusetts town who became my father was astounded, like people all over the world. Lindbergh’s pioneering Atlantic crossing inspired him to get into aviation, and he wanted to do big things, maybe captain a plane or even head an airline. But the Great Depression, which forced him from college, diminished that dream. He drove a school bus to pay for trade school, where he became an airplane mechanic, which was his job as a wartime Navy enlisted man and during his entire civilian career. On this modest salary, he and my mother raised a family, sacrificing material things they surely desired.

My father was a smart and gentle man, not prone to harsh judgment, fond of a joke, a lover of newspapers and gardening and birds, chickadees especially. He was robust until a stroke in his 80s sent him to a nursing home, but I never heard him complain during those final, decrepit years. The last time I saw him conscious, he was reading his beloved Boston Globe, his old reading glasses uneven on his nose, from a hospital bed. The morning sun was shining through the window and for a moment, I held the unrealistic hope that he would make it through this latest distress. He died four days later, quietly, I am told. I was not there.

Like others who have lost loved ones, there are conversations I never had with my Dad that I probably should have. But near the end, we did say we loved each other, which was rare (he was, after all, a Yankee). I smoothed his brow and kissed him goodbye.

So on this 22nd anniversary, I have no deep regrets. But I do have two impossible wishes.

My first is that Dad could have heard my eulogy, which I began writing that morning by his hospital bed. It spoke of quiet wisdom he imparted to his children, and of the respect and affection family and others held for him. In his modest way, he would have liked to hear it, I bet, for such praise was scarce when he was alive. But that is not how the story goes. We die and leave only memories, a strictly one-way experience. 

My second wish would be to tell Dad how his only son has fared in the last 22 years. I know he would have empathy for some bad times I went through and be proud that I made it. He would be happy that I found a woman I love, Yolanda, my wife now for ten years and my best friend for almost two decades: someone, like him, who loves gardening and birds. He would be pleased that my three wonderful children, Rachel, Katy and Cal, are making their way in the world; and that he now has three great-granddaughters, Bella, Liv and Viv, wonderful girls all. In his humble way, he would be honored to know how frequently I and my children remember and miss him. He would be saddened to learn that his oldest child, Mary Lynne, died this year (How many lives did my sister Mary Lynne Wright touch? How many did she heal? She enrolled in nursing school in the mid-1960s and remained in healthcare until her retirement a few years ago, so surely it is tens of thousands, if not more. She personified what Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing said: “Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter's or sculptor's work.” No one knew this better than her husband of 56 years: my brother-in-law, Walter “Duke” Wright. RIP, ML.) and his younger daughter, Lynda, died in 2015. But that is not how the story goes, either. We send thoughts to the dead, but the experience is one-way. We treasure photographs, but they do not speak.

Lately, I have been poring through boxes of black-and-white prints handed down from Dad’s side of my family. I am lucky to have them, more so that they were taken in the pre-digital age -- for I can touch them, as the people captured in them surely themselves did so long ago. I can imagine what they might say, if in fact they could speak.

Some of the scenes are unfamiliar to me: sailboats on a bay, a stream in winter, a couple posing on a hill, the woman dressed in fur-trimmed coat. But I recognize the house, which my grandfather, after whom I am named (George), built with his farmer’s hands; the coal stove that still heated the kitchen when I visited as a child; the birdhouses and flower gardens, which my sweet grandmother lovingly tended. I recognize my father, my uncle and my aunts, just children then in the 1920s. I peer at Dad in these portraits (he seems always to be smiling!), and the resemblance to photos of me at that age is startling, though I suppose it should not be.

A plane will fly over my house today, I am certain. When it does, I will go outside and think of young Dad, amazed that someone had taken the controls of an airplane in America and stepped out in France. A boy with a smile, his life all ahead of him.

My dad, second from top, with two of his sisters and his brother.

Dad, near the end of his life.