Column: Aurora World War II hero Dick Miller dies over Memorial Day weekend

Growing up as a kid squirrel hunting next to World War II Navy veteran Richard (Dick) Miller, Ed Huss never heard his neighbor on Hankes Road in Aurora talk about the horrors he’d been through when Japanese kamikazes sunk his ship near Okinawa, killing 158 sailors on board and wounding another 52, himself included.

It would be almost 70 years before Miller, who died this Sunday of Memorial Day weekend a month shy of his 99th birthday, would open up to others about the ugly battle in 1945 that sank the USS Drexler in less than a minute and blew Miller into the oil-soaked water as his friends died and the ocean burned around him.

It was around 2012 that Mike Eckburg, commander of Roosevelt-Aurora American Legion Post 84, along with the late Herschel Luckinbill, who himself survived a direct hit to his ship during the Vietnam War, decided to make this nearly-reclusive World War II vet, who was grieving the loss of his bride of 64 years, one of “our projects.” That is, help those veterans of the Greatest Generation, who rarely spoke of their war experiences, share those stories with the community.

No one could doubt the success of this particular quest.

Miller, who had been struggling with wife Dorothy’s death, was reluctant at first to talk publicly. But he finally agreed to be part of a veterans panel at a school in North Aurora, where even Eckburg was “floored” by his compelling tale of death, survival and heroism that had been kept hidden, even from Dorothy and their two children, for almost seven decades.

And as he got out even more into the community, it became “a beautiful thing to watch Dick open up … I think he was just so relieved to get it out there,” said Eckburg, adding that Miller, who was personnel director at the Aurora Post Office, had heard so many horrible stories from other vets, he “did not realize how bad his own experience was.”

Miller, who had begged his widowed mother to let him enlist in the Navy after graduating from East Aurora High School at age 17, had been on duty as a spotter on the Drexler in the early morning hours of May 28, 1945, when two enemy suicide planes attacked his ship and the USS Lowry.

The first Japanese plane was downed by the combined firepower of the two destroyers and from combat air patrol. The second kamikaze tried to crash into the Lowry but instead hit Miller’s ship, cutting off power and starting large gasoline fires. According to Naval accounts, despite heavy damage, the Drexler kept firing, helping bring down three Japanese planes. But another enemy suicide plane crashed into the destroyer, causing a huge explosion that rolled the ship on its starboard side and sank it within 50 seconds.

After Miller was thrown into the water, he tried not to swallow oil and diesel fuel while bobbing in a burning ocean and watching as many of his shipmates, trapped below deck, went to their watery graves.

Eckburg says Miller credited his many hours as a kid swimming in the Naperville quarry with keeping him from drowning in the couple of hours it took for rescue. He also hung on to an ammunition can floating by, later giving it to – then eventually sharing it with – a fellow sailor floundering in the water.

With that harrowing narrative and his charismatic personality, Miller over the last few years not only became one of the last few World War II vets remaining in the Fox Valley he also became the most visible. He was a fixture at many community events, from patriotic parades and golf outings and luncheons to school assemblies to museum and street dedications.

Miller also was a guest on an Honor Flight and made the trip to Midway Airport multiple times to welcome home other vets who took part in the program. He visited Washington, D.C., on a “Vets Roll” bus trip, was honored by the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field and flew by private jet to an Army/Navy football game.

Closer to home, I had the honor of interviewing Dick two years ago when he drove his John Deere tractor down Hankes Road to the backyard of his longtime neighbor Ed Huss, himself a combat Vietnam veteran, who was hosting a Memorial Day picnic.

Because this old-but-somehow-young (my words) vet always had a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye and a story – or joke – to tell, Miller was surrounded the entire afternoon by plenty of other fans, who never seemed to tire of hearing about his war experiences, his love for the United States of America and his hope for this country, no matter how “disheartened” the headlines can make all of us.

State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, D-Oswego, a Marine veteran, was an Aurora City Council member when she first heard Miller speak at an Aurora Historical Society event, putting so much feeling into his narrative “you felt like you were there,” she told me. And from that moment on, she became a huge fan.

“I always admired him after that. His story, his strength … how he lived his life to the fullest with such joy,” Kifowit added. “It was a blessing to me to have known him all these years.

“We all need to be a little more like Dick.”

Longtime friend Dick Eberling could not agree more, noting how he never saw Miller angry or heard him complain, unless it was a brief critique of politics.

“And what a patriot he was,” added Eberling. “If we went by a business or a nursing home and saw a flag that was tattered, he would tell them to replace it.

“He did so much for the community … he seemed to be energized by it” up until the end.

So it seems. The last event Eckburg took him to was the May 9 opening of the Illinois Fallen Wall exhibit at Oswego Village Hall where, as Aurora’s “oldest living Eagle Scout,” Miller led the Pledge of Allegiance, then immediately asked his driver/friend if he should also lead the group in “God Bless America.”

He certainly loved the mic, as Kifowit noted, along with his reputation as the “singing sailor.”

And he also was known for never turning down a free meal for veterans, noted an amused Eckburg, adding that, after the Fallen Wall ceremony, he insisted upon going to the Oswego American Legion Post 675 fish fry, one of his favorite places to visit.

“There’s just so much stuff that is wrapped around Dick I could go on for hours,” said Eckburg. “The day before he died he was laughing, smiling. I wish he could have stayed around. But he checked out the right way.”

Loved by many. And remembered by even more.

dcrosby@tribpub.com