The Affectionate Eric Miller

February 18, 2026

Everyday I am reminded of how different I am from everyone I’ve ever met - and 99% of that can be attributed to growing up with Dick, MJ, and Eric. Eric and I are also quite different - sometimes mutually incomprehensible. I followed our father into his enchanting world of high culture while Eric had to invent his own identity. He was no less serious in attaching himself to what he loved - and mostly that was family. He loved being the paterfamilias - and eventually had four generations under one roof in Guam. I never had to worry about our aging mother because he and Johanna took all the responsibility. God bless them!

But he also loved whiskey.

I was surprised when he first started wearing such gear,

… and dismayed, years later, one evening when he totally forgot where he left his car. Police helped him find it.

In the end, he was passing out in an SRO, paying for sex, and dying before his time. This might be called poor judgement - but he was always functional enough to be employed. He used self help books to manage an increasingly difficult life.

For better or worse, like our father, he ignored convention and cut his own path.

And that’s what we have in common.

Below, we may note the legacy he left behind:

…while the chances are quite good that all the statues left by yours truly will soon be headed to landfill.

To briefly sketch his adult life, he graduated from a local university and than a law school in Dayton. Along the way, he married his high school sweetheart. He found a job in eastern Tennessee providing legal services for the indigent. Eventually he found similar work on the other side of the planet (Guam), and spent the rest of his career either there or back in Tennessee.