2Des Moines Register, Monday November 21, 1983

Obituary

Services for George W. Miller, 80, of rural Cumming who died of a heart ailment Saturday at Iowa Methodist Medical Center, will be at 1:30 P.M. Tuesday at Galloway-McLaren Funeral Home in Norwalk. Burial will be in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery at Orilla.
A Kansas native, Mr. Miller lived in St. Marys, Martensdale and Cumming. He was a farmer.
Survivors include his wife, Ruth, a daughter, Dolly Flinn of rural Cumming, a brother, Henry of West Des Moines, a sister, Rose Brick of Cumming, two grandsons and five great-grandchildren.

History of Warren Co., Iowa - 1987; page 797

George William Miller was born August 6, 1903 at Garnett, KS of German ancestry. His parents were John Henry Miller and Wilhemina Gertrude (Hofer) Miller. One sister Rose also was born at Garnett on February 28, 1901. His parents bought a farm and moved there in the fall of 1900.
Things didn't go well for them. In three years they had just one crop. One year drought destroyed their crop and one year they were hailed out so they left Kansas when George was six months old. They came in a covered wagon to St. Joe, MO where his father found work for a time.
Then in 1905 they came to Des Moines where his father was employed until 1915. It was during this time that two more brothers and a sister was born. Henry was born on January 13, 1906, William on September 4, 1908 and Mary on January 17, 1912.
In the spring of 1915 they moved to a farm south of Commerce where George finished grade school and farmed with his father. He met his future wife Ruth Anderson at Christmas time of 1925 and first dated her on March 7, 1926. Two weeks later he bought a new Model T. Ford of which he was very proud. As the years went by, he used that car until there was very little left of it.
He and his sweetheart were married December 7, 1927. They got their license at Adel and were married there. It was stormy and bad on their wedding day and George teases that it was stormy ever after.
Their first home was near Runnells on an eighty acre farm. They were there only a year and then rented a farm on Pine Avenue. While there their daughter Ruth Lois was born, better known in many places as Dolly. George named her but her mother called her, her own little Dolly, never dreaming that she would some day be everyone's Dolly.
While living on Pine Avenue George lost the sight in one eye which bothered him at first but later seemed not to cause him any trouble. From there they moved to Coon River bottom on Army Post Road where there is now an exchange for Interstate 35. They were there four years. On November 15, 1933 a baby boy was born. He died at birth. Farming didn't prove to be very successful for George and his family in the beginning. In 1932 corn was just ten cents a bushel and he paid a man two cents a bushel to help pick it. This didn't leave much to live on. In 1934 drought and chinch bugs took the crops, but farming was his life so the struggle continued. Winters were spent cutting wood every day just to keep warm. Ruth worked endlessly by his side.
He left there in the spring of 1936 for a farm at Martensdale. Moving was always supposed to be March 1st and usually was quite a struggle. There was no surfaced roads so it was usually muddy on moving day, which it was in 1936. There were ruts up to the running board of the Model A. They stayed at Martensdale for eight years. On October 12, 1936 their daughter Ruth was shot with a .22 rifle. They were very fortunate that the bullet slid between the scalp and the skull and she was soon back in school. Her hand was semi-paralyzed for a time. On December 31, 1936 George had to have his blind eye removed and he wore an artificial eye. It looked well enough that not many people knew he had it.
In December of 1938 he was involved in a car wreck that put his wife Ruth in the hospital for sixty days. She had a broken hip and pelvis. He seemed not to be hurt but in later years his back caused a great deal of trouble.
In the spring of 1944 he moved his family to near St. Marys. He had bought 160 acres the fall before. The farm was run down and didn't produce very well. He devoted a lot of time to the farm and eventually it was doing better. George took any job he could find for a while. Ruth looked after things at home.
In May of 1959, Ruth's brother John was shot to death and George sold their farm in order to move back to Cumming to help Ruth's brother Walter. As Walter got less able to farm, George and Ruth farmed all the Anderson land which was a total of 380 acres.
When Walter died on July 11, 1971, George began to farm less until in the spring of 1976, he planned to farm just 120 acres. He and Ruth moved into the house on the 120 acre farm before Christmas of 1971.
In April of 1976 he caught a cold and pneumonia developed so he didn't farm that spring at all and none thereafter. His grandson, Don took over all of the farming at that time. George spent much of his time with Don.
In December of 1977 George and Ruth celebrated their 50th anniversary. They enjoyed an open house in their honor at St. John's Hall in Cumming.
George and Ruth did some traveling for six years after retirement and traveled most of the United States and some of Canada and made a tour to Hawaii. He enjoyed every minute of it as he had always wanted to travel.
Emphysema began to take its toll and he didn't get around as much. On November 17, 1983 he had just gone out to be with Don when he had a massive heart attack. He died early the morning of November 19th and was laid to rest in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery on November 22, 1983.