Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 2, 1993 TAG: 9306020154
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
One, Miller -- seated at his desk and not looking very killer-like -- tells a reporter: "I was in athletics from elementary school throughout my college years, and `Killer' was a name I picked up through athletics."
The other version is told by four men gathered in a cigarette-smoke-filled field house, swapping tales about their longtime friend.
"You mean he didn't tell you about fighting the gorilla?" guffaws Al Holland, Miller's best friend since the first grade. "I think that's when the name `Killer' really started to stick."
In this version, Miller was a high school sophomore or junior when a fair, featuring a wrestling gorilla, came to town. A challenger could win money for holding his own against the gorilla for a specified time. Holland dared Miller to take on the beast.
"You don't dare Killer to do anything, because then he's going to do it and prove you wrong," Holland says. "He jumped in the cage with that gorilla and whipped the daylights out of it. When he finished with it, the gorilla climbed to the top of the cage and wouldn't come down."
Both stories are true, and a lot of people have heard them. Then there's the story about Miller that not many people know:
"He's a big teddy bear," says Fleming head football coach Sherley Stuart. "A lot of people don't understand that. They see him and think he's big and mean and tough. As far as a man, yes. But as far as an individual, he's just a super nice person that will go out of his way to help you."
Miller says that's because a lot of people helped him throughout his life.
For example, retired Norfolk and Western worker John Penn led Miller in the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts from about the ages of 7 through 16 years old. Miller absorbed Penn's philosophy that "one of the best things you can do in life is try to help someone else."
"It's good when you see them turn out right," says 74-year-old Penn. "I'm glad I stayed with it. At this age, I really need the boys."
Fleming driver's education instructor Bob Lenoir remembers when he was the football and wrestling coach and Miller was his student. He had to wrestle Miller himself during practice because there was no one else physically big enough for the job. During one such match, Miller broke Lenoir's finger, but Lenoir didn't tell him about the accident until years later when Miller returned to Fleming as Lenoir's coaching replacement in 1974.
Lenoir still has the letters Miller wrote him from college. He remembers his pride at presenting Miller his senior year with the school's prestigious Fred H. Smith athletic award. And he remembers when Miller lost a regional wrestling match during his senior year because he'd been goofing off. To resolve it, Lenoir says he and Miller put a few dents in the lockers, then had a "heart-to-heart talk." Miller later adopted the technique.
"There's a lot more to George than the Killer," Lenoir says. "He does a lot of hugging along with the snorting."
Stuart met Miller as a high school senior in 1969 and helped him land a college scholarship. Stuart became Miller's mentor, and Miller later assisted him in coaching track and football.
"George has been like a son to me and a brother and family member. Once I got involved with him, he just stuck on to me, like some tape," Stuart says. "The kids just love him. And he's a hard person to say no to because he won't say no to you."
Holland and Miller used to walk together to the old Loudon Elementary School, along the way plundering people's fruit trees and bullying neighborhood kids to get their marbles. In college, with Holland attending North Carolina A&T State University, they played on competing teams.
When Holland, who played for the Philadelphia Phillies, returned to Roanoke as a Fleming assistant football coach in 1991, Miller was among the first to welcome him back. In fact, Miller always kept in touch with all of the men.
"He's one of those people that always remembers people that crossed some kind of path with him coming up," Stuart says.
Seated in his office in Fleming's Coulter Hall, wearing a navy suit, blue shirt and tie, Miller looks little like the stereotypical athletic coach. Administrative duties are filling more and more of his time, he says.
He confides that next year -- his 20th -- may be his last one coaching on the high school level.
He's a little reserved at being interviewed. There's not a lot to tell, he insists.
He has bachelor's degrees in physical education and administration from Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. He's played woodwind and brass instruments since elementary school, been interested in entertainment and deejaying part time for about 15 years. But he's giving up the deejaying because hauling equipment strains his bad back.
His parents, Amon and Callie Miller, are both deceased, as is his brother, James "Teddy," who also was called Killer. His other brother, Amos "Junior," lives in Roanoke.
He's been married for 13 years to Eva Boyd Miller, his friend since elementary school. They have no children together.
"These kids here at Fleming, they're my children," he says. "If they're doing a good job, I'm the first to commend them, and if they aren't, I'll be the first person to tell them."
Now, if you want to bring out Miller's "Killer" side, say something bad about his Fleming kids.
"This thing about drugs and alcohol and weapons here is exaggerated," he says with a slight tightness entering his voice. "I could escort you around this campus right now and in each one of these halls you'd be able to hear a pin fall.
"The students are in class, where they're supposed to be. They do exactly what we ask of them and they have far more good days than bad. Yet anytime something does manage to happen, the whole world finds out about it."
Eleventh-grade wrestlers Mosi Coleman and John Brandon are two of Miller's "kids." Unlike Miller, Mosi and John are from single-parent homes. To them, Miller's a surrogate dad.
"He helps us out with money, with teachers, with our education. He pushes me, and I need that," Mosi says.
"He gives us moral support and takes us to Show Biz for pizza. Sometimes, he just sits and talks with us," John adds.
In February, Miller took on even more "kids" in his new part-time position as executive director of the New Life Outreach Center in Roanoke. The center, which operates in a partnership with the Roanoke City Schools Alternative Education program, aims to help youths at risk of dropping out of school.
Miller says he takes it personally when things go wrong or his kids go astray, because he'd never give advice he felt was inappropriate. Yet, he accepts that he can't save every student; he can only try.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB