Everett, Wash.
Published: Wednesday, May 28, 2008

From Elvis to Ennis, Roman Miller has seen it all

Now in his 80s, Roman Miller, who played catch with Elvis, learned from Einstein and recruited Elgin Baylor, is shaping young people's lives as an athletic advisor at Archbishop Murphy

By Larry Henry
Special to The Herald

 He played catch with Elvis.

"I got to know him pretty well," Roman Miller said. "He was a good guy."

The year was 1962, Seattle was hosting the World's Fair, and Presley was in town to film scenes for his movie, "It Happened at the World's Fair."

Miller had connections that allowed him to hang out with "The King" and toss the football around.

Six years earlier, Miller had watched as a couple of young men tossed a football around on the campus at the College of Idaho. He had gone there to check out a hotshot basketball player who was looking to transfer because the Idaho coach had been fired and the school was cutting back on scholarships.

A referee said the kid was the best player he had ever seen. So Miller went to see for himself, and as he came around the corner of a building that day, he happened upon these two kids chucking a football back and forth.

One of them was R.C. Owens, who would go on to catch footballs for the San Francisco 49ers. The other kid would make a name for himself in pro basketball, after starring for Seattle University, Miller's alma mater.

Though Miller wasn't officially representing Seattle U., he did get a chance to see the hotshot basketball player work out. "When he said they were going to shoot around in the gym," Miller recalled, "I used the excuse of going to the bathroom to slip inside the gym and watch them."

Off that one workout, Miller could tell the referee hadn't been exaggerating about Elgin Baylor's skills.

Baylor, of course, ended up at Seattle U., in no small part due to Miller, and led the Chieftains to the 1958 NCAA finals, where they lost to the Kentucky Wildcats.

If that's all Roman Miller had done in his life, you could say he had a pretty eventful life.

Elvis and Elgin: That's a tough combination to match.

They're just a small slice of his life, however. The list of people he's known ... well, he probably couldn't even remember them all. On second thought, with that razar-sharp mind of his, he probably could.

Suffice to say, it's a very long list. Athletes (professional and amateur), coaches, referees, entertainers, politicians, baseball owners, general managers, managers, one very famous physicist, people in general, and thousands of kids.

His experiences would fill volumes. So, we give you a sampling of them. He had a key role in getting two governors elected -- Dan Evans and John Spellman. He taught high school and was an assistant athletic director at Seattle U. He saw the potential of a bow-legged Mt. Tahoma High School sophomore named Ron Cey long before anyone else was scouting him. He told a kid named Tom Workman three months before the NBA draft in which round he would be taken and by which team. He was exactly right. Then he served as Workman's agent. As a kid, Miller had a job at Longacres Racetrack earning 10 cents an hour, then later was on the state horse racing commission.

At a spry 82 years of age, Miller can go on and on about the people he's met and befriended, and the things he's done. Sometimes he thinks he talks too much. But he's led such a fascinating life, you tend to just sit back and listen.

You can learn something from Roman Miller. You can gain insight. You can see wisdom at work.

"When the kids talk to him, they're in awe because he knows so much," said Bill Lucas, an assistant football coach at Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy High School in Mill Creek. "He has a lot of history."

A resident of Edmonds, Miller spends a lot of time these days at Archbishop Murphy, where he is on the board of trustees and serves as an athletic advisor with his own office.

His influence was felt when the school hired its first football coach: Miller pushed hard for Terry Ennis.

"Terry was very smart, very dedicated and very loyal," Miller said. "He was really interested in the long-range future of kids."

Ennis, of course, put together a program that was extremely successful, with two state championships, before his death from prostate cancer in September.

Miller attended all the football games, home and away, and would often walk through the press box handing out candy bars, and if he didn't know you, the first thing he'd ask is where you went to high school.

That would get people to talking, and wherever they'd gone to school, no matter how small or unknown it was, chances are Miller would know someone from there.

On the day he was interviewed for this story, he arrived at Archbishop Murphy and needed help carrying some boxes from his car to his office. He prevailed upon a young man to give him a hand and then said, "I think I know you. Isn't your name Wertz?" And of course, it was. "I went to school with your grandfather," Miller said.

Is it any wonder he got to know Elvis? Or to work for Paul Richards as a major league baseball scout?

Miller got to know Richards when the latter managed the Seattle Rainiers for one season, and then when Richards became general manager of the expansion Houston Colt 45s, later renamed the Astros, he hired Miller as his lead scout in the Northwest with this piece of advice: "The best scouts are the ones who tell us who not to sign."

A player he'd liked to have signed was Bill Tsoukalas, but the Lincoln High School pitcher was taken by the Cleveland Indians in the 32nd round in 1969 after his senior year at Seattle U. Years later, Tsoukalas, who got as high as Class AAA before an injury ended his career, still is indebted to Miller for being "pretty instrumental in getting me noticed."

The executive director of the Snohomish County Boys and Girls Clubs, Tsoukalas also credits Miller for giving him some sage advice: Make sure you connect with the people you meet because you never know when they'll be helpful to you.

"That's been my operating principle," Tsoukalas said, "to try and meet and greet as many people as I can."

You can pick Roman Miller out in any crowd. He's tall, lean and very fit, and he always wears an Archbishop Murphy cap and letterman's jacket -- a gift to him, courtesy of the school -- to sports events. He might be the biggest fan the school has, this a man who graduated from O'Dea -- another Catholic High School in Seattle.

When Archbishop Murphy was started, Miller gave it his full support because there wasn't another Catholic High School between Seattle and Canada. "I wanted to make it the O'Dea of the north," he said, then added with a chuckle. "Now when I talk to people at O'Dea, I tell them I want to make them the Archbishop Murphy of the south. They kind of get mad at me."

It would be hard to get mad at Roman Miller. Though he never married and thus never had any grandchildren, he is a surrogate grandfather to many kids. He is someone a kid could confide in and know that his secrets are sacred.

He has a wry sense of humor. When they made him a member of the Murphy board of trustees, they told him they did it because of his wisdom. "After a couple of months," he said, "I asked them when in the world they were going to start using my wisdom?'"

They have since wised up.

One person who was quick to take advantage of the depth of Miller's knowledge was Rick Stubrud, who is completing his first full year as Murphy's athletic director. "Absolutely," Stubrud said. "He's a good person to bounce ideas off of."

One more thing. That famous physicist he once crossed paths with?

Miller worked security on the Manhattan Project during World War II, helping transport plutonium to Los Alamos, N.M., where the atom bomb was being made.

"They had us take a crash course on radiation at Princeton University," Miller said. "The instructor was Albert Einstein."

When kids ask him what he remembers most about Einstein, Miller replies, "He needed a haircut."

Elvis. Elgin. Ennis. And Einstein.

That's an even tougher combination to beat.
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA