Column: My friend, Brother James Miller; the man who might be saint

By Richard “Harv” Giese

On a sunny day in June of 1963, five young men, having just a couple of weeks before gone through the rite of passage known as high school graduation, said their goodbyes to family, friends, and Stevens Point.

Dave, Gordie, Tom, Rich and I were leaving home to make the journey to Winona, Minnesota. Our intent was to enter a religious order, the Christian Brothers, who at that time comprised the majority of the teaching faculty at Pacelli High School, which then occupied the site of what is now the YMCA.

It was in Winona, at the Christian Brother’s Novitiate, that I would first meet Brother James Miller.

When we had declared, during our senior year, our intent to become members of the community of Christian Brothers, we made a weekend visit to the Novitiate campus that would be our home for the next eighteen months. Arriving at the Novitiate, the scene was just as idyllic as we remembered from our visit.

Nestled on a rise in St. Yon Valley, the impressive stone building was located just beyond the campus of St. Mary’s College, screened by a tree line and flowing creek, with towering bluffs cradling a natural amphitheater on the valley floor.

The first item of business was to meet our roommates and mentor, or “guardian angel”, as they were called. My assigned mentor was Brother James Miller. He was chosen by the director, Brother John, and staff, as were most mentors, trying to match someone, who was from your hometown area, if possible.

Brother Jim, like myself, happened to be an alumni of Pacelli High School. It was his task to teach me the ropes and routine of religious life in the novitiate.

My very first impression of Brother Jim was his humble and unassuming manner, that not only put you immediately at ease, but made you feel that you were the only person in the world at that moment. He was reserved when he needed to be, quick to smile, and had an infectious laugh.

Having grown up on a farm just outside of Stevens Point, in the Town of Ellis, Brother Jim came equipped with all the skills and temperament a farm boy needs to have acquired. I don’t think there was anything he couldn’t fix, including my first pangs of homesickness.

Like me, he was the first born and had four siblings. Unlike me, he had a reserve of patience to be envied. He taught by example, and his life lessons for me were not lost, although I must admit I have not employed them with the strong, yet gentle grace he possessed.

Too soon that first summer turned to fall. We received our robes, our religious names. Our mentors, including Brother Jim, advanced to the next stage of religious formation, the Scholasticate, on the campus of St. Mary College, from where he would begin his formal college education.

We still saw each other from time to time, at picnics and game days, where we enjoyed the friendly rivalry between us novices and the scholastics. He was always eager to hear how his former charge was doing.

In August of 1964, one month before first vows, I left the Christian Brothers. Why is a story for another time and place, although I entertained the prospect of returning after college. Brother James Miller graduated from St. Mary College and went on to teach at Cretin High school in St. Paul.

Despite the security of community life, he felt a deeper calling to do missionary work among the poor, teaching young boys to be farmers as his father taught him, and to give them the academic skills and religious training to be successful in providing for their future families. Making his desire to be a missionary known to his superiors, he was finally sent to Nicaragua to teach.

On the few occasions he was able to return to the Stevens Point area to visit his family in Ellis, he always made it a point to look up his little “brother”, even though he was only five months older than I, to find out how I was doing and to tell me about the people and conditions where he was in Nicaragua.

You couldn’t miss that he was in love with God, the people, and the work he was doing. He would come to Shippy Shoe Store, where I worked, and pretend to be shopping for shoes, using it as an excuse to find time for us to talk.

When the political situation in Nicaragua became extremely dangerous in the midst of a civil war, he, along with the other brothers were called back to the states. It did not deter his desire and energy to go back to Central America and he was finally re-assigned to teach at a boarding school at an Indian Center in Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

The people loved him and his selfless work among them. They gave him the name Brother Santiago.

Brother Santiago James Miller, in turn loved the people and the work he was doing. But here, too, the political climate grew tense. Teenage boys, his students, were in constant danger of being kidnapped off the street and conscripted into the military, despite the fact that they had legal student deferments until they graduated high school.

When word would come that any of their boys were being detained by the local police, he and the other brothers would go to the police and advocate for them, pointing out that they were illegally taken and producing the papers to prove it. Confronting this injustice did not ingratiate the Brothers with the local authorities. The situation became more tense.

On February 13, 1982, Brother Santiago was returning with some of the boys to the campus. Noticing a window in need of repair, he asked them to go inside the dormitory to get his tools. While the boys were inside, masked gunmen slipped up behind Brother Santiago and shot him multiple times, emptying their guns.

The boys heard the gunshots, and looked from a window to see the men killing him.

The leader looked up at the boys in the window and said nothing as the boys were frozen in terror. The men then fled, and were never apprehended or prosecuted.

His students and the townspeople, who all knew and loved him, were devastated. When it was determined that his body would be brought back to the states for burial, the town marched in procession, carrying the coffin in which Brother Santiago lay, all the way to the airport for his journey home.

Brother James Miller, my friend and mentor, was martyred on Saturday, February 13, 1982. The news first reached me on the radio, the next evening, as I was driving to St. Stephen school gym to play basketball. I was in total disbelief and shock.

It was Sunday evening, February 14, 1982; Valentine’s Day. That fact was not lost on me.

I recalled the words of John 15:13, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Brother James Miller 1944-1982.

On Tuesday, March 20, 2018, Brother James Miller was beatified by the Vatican, the next to last step on the road to being declared a saint. We now call him Blessed Brother James Miller.

He lived his life simply, prayerfully, and dedicated to serving God and others. Hopefully soon, we will have a declared Saint from Stevens Point who will be known throughout the world because of “no greater love…”