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William \u201cBill\u201d Miller, beloved father, grandfather, and great grandfather, passed away on October 01, 2024 at the age of 96 at his home in West Union, Iowa after a short illness.<\/p>\nWilliam \u201cBill\u201d Miller, beloved father, grandfather, and great grandfather, passed away on October 01, 2024 at the age of 96 at his home in West Union, Iowa after a short illness.<\/p>\n
Bill was born February 16, 1928 to Edna and Lloyd Miller on a farm in Fayette, Iowa and graduated from Fayette High School in 1945.\u00a0 Bill then enlisted in the navy during WWII and was stationed off the coast of Japan as a Machinist Mate on the USS Cascade.\u00a0 After he finished his tour, Bill returned to Iowa where he met the love of his life, his wife Ruby, whom he married in Juneau, Alaska on September 29, 1950.\u00a0 Sadly, Ruby passed away on April 24, 2021 after the two shared a loving marriage for over 70 years.\u00a0 Four children were born of this union, Beth, Roxanne, Scott and Barbara.<\/p>\n
Bill finished his Bachelor\u2019s degree at Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa and then continued on to get his Masters in Science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.\u00a0 Bill loved teaching and held many positions in this field throughout his lifetime.\u00a0 He taught high school science in Skagway Alaska, Ivanhoe, Minnesota and Des Plaines, Illinois.\u00a0 Prior to his retirement he taught biology and botany at Harper College, in Palatine, Illinois.<\/p>\n
Bill was an avid fisherman and took the family on many vacations to the north woods of Minnesota and Canada. He loved the outdoors and enjoyed hiking and camping. Around the house he was truly a jack of all trades, building his own fishing boat in Alaska and helping to build the family homes in Minnesota and Iowa.<\/p>\n
After his retirement, Bill and Ruby eventually returned home to Iowa and built a home on Ruby\u2019s family farm where they lived for over 30 years. Bill and Ruby were an adventurous couple who loved to travel extensively around the US and throughout the world, including Belize, Pompeii, Australia, and the pyramids in Egypt. \u00a0In his later years, Bill went to horse-packing camp in Colorado and followed the Lewis and Clark Trail by bus.\u00a0 Bill enjoyed reading, antiquing, gardening and maintaining his many birdhouses and apple and walnut trees. He was honored as a Navy WWII veteran in May of 2015 and flew to Washington DC on the \u201cHonor Flight\u201d.<\/p>\n
He was preceded in death by his wife, Ruby (Koester) Miller, and his parents Edna (Lockwood) and Lloyd Miller and brother Max Miller.<\/p>\n
Surviving Bill are his children, Beth (Mark) Mniszewski of Missoula, Montana, Roxanne (Steve) Purucker of Cary, North Carolina, Scott Miller of West Union, Iowa and Barbara (Matt) Bohnert of Bend, Oregon; grandchildren Christopher Flowers, Annie Flowers, David Purucker, Brett Bohnert and Lainey Bohnert; and his great-grandchildren Samuel, Isaac, Silas, Heath and Theo Flowers and Cash and Renn Cantrell.<\/p>\n
Bill will always be missed and forever in our hearts.<\/p>\n
A Service and Celebration of Life will be held on November 2, 2024<\/span><\/strong> at 11:00 am at St. Peters Lutheran Church in Eldorado, Iowa with lunch afterward in the church basement.<\/p>\n In lieu of flowers, donations may be made, in Bill\u2019s name, to The West Union Community Library or consider planting a tree in his honor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" William \u201cBill\u201d Miller, beloved father, grandfather, and great grandfather, passed away on October 01, 2024 at the age of 96 at his home in West Union, Iowa after a short illness. Bill was born February 16, 1928 to Edna and Lloyd Miller on a farm in Fayette, Iowa and graduated from Fayette High School in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[139],"class_list":["post-16914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituaries","tag-miller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16914"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17053,"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16914\/revisions\/17053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graufuneralhomes.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}