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Today's Featured Biography

 
Cheryl Brown Miller

After graduating from East High I attended the University of Iowa, Iowa City for 4 years and graduated in 1960 with a BA in science education. Rhys and I met at Iowa and we were married the fall of 1959(my senior year).

He soon decided graduate school wasn't what he wanted and found a job with IBM in Cedar Rapids. About the time I was graduating we were transferred to Waterloo. I decided I did not want to try to teach in our home town and found a job in the city milk lab, testing milk samples. Pretty boring so I quit in Feb. Our first daughter was born the following Nov.

We were transferred to Des Moines shortly after that and were there a year or so and then to Marshalltown where Rhys was with Lennox Industries. Our second daughter was born there.

In spring of 1966 we went back to Iowa City where Rhys was with the Measurement Research Center and then in the fall of 1968 we went to Lisle, Ill(Chicago area) with Control Data. We spent 5 years there. A great area where we lived.

Spring of 1974 Rhys was finally able to get transferred to Minneapolis with Control Data and we have been here ever since. Yea!!! No more moving----just various job layoffs, changes, etc.

Along the way our kids grew up and went to Luther College in Decorah, graduated, etc. got their masters degrees elsewhere(Vermont and Buffalo, NY)and both ultimately ended up back here in the Twin Cities. Never thought that would happen.

No grandkids as neither one had kids when they were married and are both single now. Just two granddogs right now(2012)

In 1984 I acquired a couple "part time" jobs. I was a survery research interviewer from then until 1997 when Rhys retired. That was very interesting work and I enjoyed it. This was telephone interviewing which we did from home and logged our own hours. Our boss was a friend from church with her own company. She trained all of us well and was a very good boss. It didn't matter the what hours we worked as long as the job got done.

The other job I had at that time until spring of 1990 was as a coordinator for a team that did utilization reviews for group homes for the retarded every six months. I did the scheduling and got directions to the other two people on the team. This was all over the Twin Cities metro area and some outstate homes. I did learn a lot about that area but the job itself became sort of routine and boring after a time.

Through out all these years I have always been a volunteer. A lot of it in the schools when then kids were in school here and also in the community, i.e., driving for Meals on Wheels, serving on that board, driving for Veap(Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People) taking people to medical appts., serving on and also chairing our outread committee at church, getting a Stephen Ministry Program(a one-to-one lay caring program) started at our church, taking the training and being an active Stephen Minister for 13 years.

In 1995 we got our dog, Duncan, and I spend a considerable amount of time each week(almost daily) walking him at the off leash dog park near Minnehaha Falls along the Mississippi River(That is where I slipped and fell down and broke my leg the spring of '07).

The fall of 1997 I started doing Morris Dancing, which is English folk dancing. Very energetic, using hankies and or sticks to clash. Gee, if you want to know more google Morris dance and go to Minnesota and Bells of the North, my women's team. It is great fun and a great group of people. Over a 100 Morris dancers in the Twin Cities---6 teams.

Fall of 1999 I started Modern Western Square Dancing and have done that regularly once a week up until my club had to fold a couple years ago.

So, I manage to keep busy. Last winter we spent three months in Green Valley, AZ. Rhys' sister(Sally Miller Turner and Steve) live there permanently now. Rhys' dad was a Methodist minister in Waterlo(Fred) and when he retired from the Iowa Conference went to Green Valley in '73 as the first assoc. minister of the Meth. church there. That's how we knew about Green Valley. There have been some other years in the past we have spent a little time there in the winter.

That is sort of what we do. Our biggest thing coming up this fall is our daughters taking us to Yosemite National Park for a number of days. They planned this a year ago and told us about it last Sept. It about blew us away when they told us. Pretty nice of them.

Hope that as this web site gets passed around to other classmates some of us can connect more. Several years ago I connected with some of the folks from the class of '55 and have a lot of fun writing to various ones and even occasionally getting together at various places.

Another update. Nov. of '07 our dog, Duncan, died which was very sad. He was 13 yrs. Think maybe he contracted valley fever in AZ the winter of '07, a fungal disease and it was too late when diagnosed. As a result he have only been spending a week in Jan. now in AZ. Feb. or March of '08 we got our current dog, Barron. He was 15 months old and is a real job and a very cuddly dog. I still spend a lot of time at the off-leash dog park.

Cheryl

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