A side note: Compare our Declaration of Independence. Although it is 170 years removed from the King James translation it still very similar.

Again, Thank You

Clint and Bobbie Bostick

ohopal@sunflower.com

i’m so grateful for the time you devoted to your jim miller articles. as a 50-year member of the Barbershop Harmony Society, i can attest that jim was all the hero that you have portrayed, and more. as a leader and as a person, he was unique — even if you didn’t know of his military or athletic background. his philosophy was as simple as it was successful: do it from the heart, the best way you know how, and give it all you got. jim coached my chorus, he was a great friend to my quartet and he was one of the greatest influences in my barbershopping life. there will not be another like him.

Thank you for bringing the exceptional life of this great man to the attention of (more) Louisvillians and bloggers. I became acquainted with your father, Byron, through our mutual friend, Ms. Chilton Price, who passed away in January of 2010. Both Chilton and Jim were mentors to me, and while guests in her home, I had approached your dad about writing a forward for my book about Jim’s life from taped interviews conducted with the latter a few years ago. I plan to complete the book before the New Year. Your articles reconfirm my suspicion that other people will be interested in, and will continue to be inspired by the goodness and the excellence Jim displayed in so many endeavors.

Here is an excerpt, in Jim’s words:

“My dad had built up a pretty good organization with his trucking company (I was ten years old by then), and later, during the war, anybody with a business was making money. I eventually went to work for him, and I never minded the low level part of the job, but when he died at fifty-three in 1951, all of a sudden, Mom and I were the owner/managers with twenty-six trucks and a public warehouse. My role changed drastically, and I just didn’t like the things you had to do sometimes – like “buy” an account from a guy. And there were some pretty tough and underhanded people you had to deal with. I had been protected from that side of life, being an only child in a family that was pretty well-fixed, compared with others of the time. I just never developed a taste for crude people and practices like that, so I never liked the trucking business after I got into management. But my mom just loved it because it was my dad’s, and they had built it together. So I hung in there.”

“My dad was a dreamer, and did some dumb things, but he did some smart things too – made a bunch of money – lost some of it, gave a lot of it away. He had a phobia about life insurance, so when he died, he never had bought that first nickel’s worth. Dad ended up with some tax problems; they took everything away from him, and I think that’s what killed him, really. He had a nine month session with the Internal Revenue, and they were just brutal. When he was signing the final papers, and they were taking everything he owned, I shared an office with Dad, and this IRS guy said to him, ‘Mr. Miller, if you were to take this thing to court, you would probably win, but by the time we got finished stretching it out, it would probably cost you more in legal fees.’” And the guy laughed!

“Well, I let him have it; I got up from a seated position, and hit that guy right in the mouth with a right uppercut – lifted him off the ground with it, and knocked him out. I should have known better at twenty-six years old. Well, as he started to “come to,” my dad never even looked up from his papers. When the guy shook his head, and sat down, Dad said, ‘OK, G-man, how much is that gonna cost me?’ And the fellow says ‘Miller that’s gonna cost you a thousand dollars.’ And my dad wrote him out a check, without even lookin’ at him. And as he handed him the check, Dad said, ‘I got another grand if you wanna go another round.’ The guy declined. I should have known better, because I was a grown man by then, but those people would call my mom and dad at two o’clock in the morning, and ask questions about who they’d written checks to years before. They just never let up on him.”

“Seeing my Dad, and watching the mistakes and good judgments that he made, it was a good enough example. The big thing was the sense of competition that he instilled in me. Wanting to be the very best that you could be. And I don’t mean being the best in the world, but I’m talking about given my intellect and my talent and my education, I do believe I did a couple of things as well as I could do ‘em. When I played football, I played the game a few times as well as I could possibly do it. And in the barbershop singing and chorus directing, on a few occasions, I really believe that I did my best.”

Ken Hatton