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Subject: [IDBEARLA] Gary H. Miles, 1937-2003 (Obit)
Date: 18 May 2003 13:16:12 -0600

This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.

Surnames: Miles, Hancy, Anderson
Classification: Obituary

Message Board URL:

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/hd.2ADI/847

Message Board Post:

Montgomery High students, teachers remember former principal Miles

Gary Miles
Picture courtesy of HarkTheHerald.com




As principal of Montgomery High School for 20 years, Gary H. Miles was known as "The Duke."
The 6-foot-5 former college basketball star had the stature and the drawl to match Western movie actor John Wayne, and an engaging manner that endeared him to many of the 40,000 students who attended the school during Miles' tenure from 1972-92.

Miles died Thursday of prostate cancer at his home in Provo, Utah. He was 65.

His daughter Susan Miles Anderson of Santa Rosa said her father is still fondly remembered.

"I can't even go through a grocery store without someone coming up to me and saying something about my father and how he touched their life," she said.

Proof of Miles' popularity with students is found in the inscriptions in Montgomery yearbooks for two decades, Anderson said.

Her own yearbook from 1981 includes a picture of father and daughter, principal and student, having lunch together in the school quad, as they always did.

"We loved having him as principal," she said.

Miles' goal was to serve as principal while his five children passed through Montgomery, and it became a strain, Anderson said.

After the fourth child graduated, Miles had to wait nine years for his youngest, Brian, to finish up. When Brian graduated in June 1992, Miles handed him and the other grads their diplomas, and retired two weeks later.

"When he got Brian out of there, his job was done," Anderson said. "It was time to move on."

Miles and his wife, Marilyn, who met as students at Brigham Young University in the 1950s, moved to Provo in retirement. Miles worked briefly as an admissions counselor at BYU and served as a Mormon bishop for a BYU Ward.

Born in tiny Montpelier, Idaho, Miles won a basketball scholarship to BYU, graduating in 1959. He started work as a teacher in Glendale in 1960, then moved to Santa Rosa and taught business at Montgomery from 1963-66.

Miles became dean of boys at Santa Rosa High in 1966 and was appointed vice principal in 1970. Two years later, he settled in at Montgomery, starting the same day his oldest daughter, Dyanna, entered as a freshman.

In 1991, Montgomery was one of only 169 of the 17,700 public high schools in the United States to receive a National Blue Ribbon School award.

Errin Barrett, a graduating senior in 1992, said Miles and his students enjoyed a mutual respect. "He is a father figure who goes out of his way and is able to relate to students," she said in an interview at the time.

Survivors, in addition to Anderson, are Miles' wife, Marilyn Miles of Provo; daughters Dyanna Moore of San Marcos and Cathy Colledge of Provo; sons David Miles of Pleasant Grove, Utah, and Brian Miles of Provo; sisters Shirley Derricott of Portland, Ore., and Carol Matthews of Green River,
Wyo.; 21 grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at Grandview Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Provo.

-From the PRESS DEMOCRAT: http://pressdemo.com/local/obits/24obit_b2.html



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Gary H. Miles
The Daily Herald on Friday, January 24
Gary H. Miles, 65, died January 23, 2003, at his home after a 10 year battle with cancer. Born in Montpelier, Idaho to William Harold Miles and Eugena Claire Hancy Miles. He married Marilyn Anderson in the Los Angeles Temple on September 5, 1957. He earned a master's degree from L.A. State College in 1962 while teaching at Pasadena High School. He raised his family in Santa Rosa, California where he taught at Montgomery High School for 3 years and was principal for 20 years. He retired from Montgomery after handing his youngest child his diploma at graduation in 1992. His children are very grateful they all had dad as their high school principal.

Gary moved to Provo, Utah in 1992 and worked a short time at Brigham Young University. He served in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a high counselor, bishop, and most recently as a Church Service Missionary. He is survived by his wife Marilyn, and children: Dyanna Moore, Cathy Colledge, Susan Anderson David Miles and Brian Miles; his sisters, Shirley Derricott and Carol Matthew and 21 grandchildren.

Funeral services will be held Monday, January 27, 2003, at 11 a.m., in the Grandview 1st Ward Chapel, 1555 N. 1350 West, Provo. Friends may call one hour prior to services. Interment, East Lawn Memorial Hills. Services under the direction of Berg Mortuary of Provo.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A7.

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