News

By Ron Hayes

BRINY BREEZES — Roy Miller was a child of the Great Depression who never forgot its lessons. You don’t throw broken things away, you fix them. You work hard and appreciate what you have.
“I remember once when I was cooking,” his son Roy Jr. recalls. “I put too much food on his plate. He ate it, and then complained for three days that I’d given him too much food. But he ate it. You didn’t waste anything.”
Mr. Miller’s friends and neighbors benefited from that lesson every Monday morning as he circled the town of Briny Breezes in a pickup truck, collecting recycling bins. In 2014, his volunteer service helped the town score the highest per-capita recycling rate among South County’s coastal communities.
Mr. Miller, who suffered a stroke in October, died on June 17 at Trustbridge Hospice in Lake Worth. He was 92 and had lived in Briny Breezes since 1985.
“He was very, very personable and loved to tell stories,” said his son, who lives in Lantana. “He was a leader. He didn’t want to be a leader, but he was a take-charge kind of guy.”
Roy Vernon Miller was born on July 28, 1925, in Brockton, Mass.
As a teen, he worked at Walsh’s Ice Cream stand in the city’s expansive D.W. Field Park. Also scooping ice cream that summer was a boy named Ralph “Buddy” Magnuson, who had a sister named Rose, known to all as Sunshine. Roy was 17. She was 10.
Roy and Sunshine Miller, who married in 1950, would have celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary June 25.
Leaving school in the 11th grade, Mr. Miller worked as an usher at Brockton’s Colonial Theatre before joining the U.S. Navy in 1943. He served as a gunner attached to merchant ships, and after being discharged in 1945 went to work for Plymouth Rubber Co. in Canton, Mass.
In 1968, he retired and the family moved to Athol, Mass., where he worked for a local contractor, doing industrial cleaning and painting.
In Briny Breezes, Mr. Miller was very active in Curtain Raisers, the town’s amateur theater company, writing and acting in several productions.
The family still laughs at the time Mr. Miller suggested the group might put on a burlesque show.
“We’re not going to strip!” the women exclaimed.
Mr. Miller had to explain that a burlesque show offered mildly risqué humor, but nudity was not required.
In 1995, his friend and neighbor, Don Hebert, got him a part-time job at the St. Andrews Club.
Joined by another neighbor, Gene Robey, the trio dubbed themselves “The Over the Hill Gang,” and for the next 22 years, Mr. Miller worked, often seven days a week, washing and rebagging golf balls he’d gathered from the practice range.
“At one point, Roy quit, and they told him he had to come back because everyone liked him so much,” Hebert recalled. “I just loved working with him, and I don’t know anybody at St. Andrews or in Briny Breezes who would have a bad word to say about him. He was a great and compassionate man.”
In addition to his work at the St. Andrews Club, Mr. Miller took on part-time jobs caring for residents’ homes when they went north for the winter.
“He did a lot of things,” his son said. “He loved music, that’s why he did the plays. But most of the time he worked hard all his life.”
In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Miller is survived by another son, Robert, and a grandson, Adam, of California.
A memorial service in Briny Breezes will be scheduled after winter residents return.