Father and son relationships touch ‘Admiral Joe’

BRANDON (FBW)—Laying in a hospital bed during the Vietnam war, the son of a Marine Corps general who had just lost three extremities in battle looked up at his father who had rushed into the sterile ward to see him.

“Dad, I was doing the best I could do,” the lieu­tenant told his father, recalled Joseph Miller, a rear admiral in the United States Navy Reserve medical corps.

As a neurosurgical consultant at the U.S. Naval Hospital in DaNang, Republic of Vietnam in 1969, Miller said he saw much of the horrors of war—realizing war “has a profound effect on the human personality.”

“War is terrible,” Miller said.

Placed under the fire of battle, good men can turn bad and bad men good, the decorated veteran said.

“Once you see … a man killed by another man it will take something out of you that can never be replaced,” Miller said. “It’s just a profound thing to see a human being dying in a bunker.”

The power of a leader—good or bad—is God given, said Miller, a deacon at First Baptist Church in Brandon.

“If you’re a patriotic American and you’re a strong Christian you will look to your leader for leadership because he is there because of the power of God,” Miller said.

In his experience, Miller said he learned about the negative aspects of war.

“It’s my impression,” Miller emphasized, “that Bush has done good [in the Iraq War] in that the war has been maintained over there and many of these terrorists have come to Iraq just to kill Americans.”

“In the war over there our young men have made great sacrifices,” Miller continued.

Miller said he fears not enough people remember those sacrifices.

“I’ve seen a change and deterioration of patriotism in this country,” Miller said.

About 1,800 veterans die each day according to a press release from the Department of Defense. Miller, aware of that statistic, said 2006 was the first year there were more non-veterans than veterans in Congress.

“If you’re involved in the military like I am, then you see the difference in patriotism in different groups,” Miller said. “So, I’ve taken it on myself to try to improve patriotism.”

Miller said he promoted a set of pins that portray an American flag alongside a service flag denoting a branch of service or—for patriots who have not served in the military—a flag with the picture of a yellow ribbon.

The pin serves as a testimony, Miller said. And so far, 138 men at First Baptist—including Senior Pastor Tommy Green—wear the pin.

“One hundred and thirty-eight men have raised their hands and said, ‘I will wear the pin with honor and this pin means that I am a man of prayer and a patriotic American,’” Miller said. “That’s all it means. It has no political meaning whatsoever.”

For Green, the pin serves as a re­mind­­er to pray for service men and women and to be thankful for the privilege of living in the United States, he said.

Grateful for “Admiral Joe’s” support of him and faithfulness to the church, Green said Miller has been very active as a lay leader, teaching Sunday School and chairing committees.

One of the teams Miller and his wife of 29 years, Cathy, were involved with was First Baptist’s be­reavement ministry, Green said.

Encouraging families during their time of loss with letters, phone calls, and their presence at funerals, the Millers could empathize through the loss of two of their own children. Miller recalled the deaths of two of his sons from cancer at the ages of 17 and 44.

“I’ve always been a man of prayer and God gives us the strength,” Miller said of those painful times in his past. “We can’t understand everything but when the children were sick, sometimes just to be absolutely alone, I would get in my car and drive through our park or sit in the park with the car closed and pray about it and I had a peace all the way through it when my first son died.”

Realizing one night that his oldest son was going to die before he was through high school, Miller said he wanted to take him back to the hospital. His son refused.

“No, Dad, I’ll stay here. I’m ready to go,” Miller recalled the youngster saying. “When a person’s work is done on this earth then God takes him to heaven,” his son continued.

His closeness to death as a father, an officer, and a neurosurgeon has brought him closer to his family, Miller said.

Not a believer in divorce, Miller said both he and his wife Cathy were divorced—reluctantly and for reasons he said were outside their control—before they met.

“She’s the miracle in my life,” Miller said. “She’s the greatest Christian I’ve ever known.”

Through daily meditation, prayer, and Bible read­ings, the Millers focus on their relationships with God, seeking to share Christ by being godly examples.

Their abstinence from drinking alcoholic beverages is one way they create an opening to tell their beliefs.

Not drinking helped change the “texture” of the annual admirals’ meeting, Miller said, and using his teetotaler stance is an old way to open the door to witnessing.

“It used to be sort of drunken brawls, but we didn’t drink and it was noted and finally other admirals stared joining us that didn’t drink too,” Miller said.

In Vietnam, the only place to go in off hours was the bar on base, Miller said. Rather than holing up in his room, Miller decided to visit the nightclub.

Feeling a little guilty for even walking through the door, Miller said he ordered a glass of milk rather than a coke, fearing people would think the soda had alcohol in it.

By the third night he visited the bar, five other officers had also ordered milk and by the time he left Vietnam several months later there were more than 20 men who would sit in a corner with glasses of milk, coke, Kool-Aid, and orange juice, Miller recalled.

Knowing his testimony, one “tough” young man came into the room where he was working while the hospital was attacked with rockets, Miller said. The man had gone “berserk,” running down the halls and screaming. The two of them crawled under a metal bed to wait out the bombing. While they crouched under the trembling bed frame, Miller said he was able to share the Gospel and the man became a believer.

The story is indicative of Miller’s character, according to Pastor Green. Both of the Millers are committed to bringing guests to church and interacting with other people.

“They are seeking to reach out and bring folks to the church and so they are just very caring, very loving people,” Green said. “Across the life of the church I see him always engaging in conversation with people. He listens to people. He wants to know what’s going on in their lives so he can encourage them. And that’s something I see very often in him.”