EULOGY FOR JASON MILLER

Since Jason passed away last Sunday, we have received a tremendous number of calls and messages about our brother, telling us what we all knew personally but echoing his impact on his friends and the people he came across throughout his life. It has warmed all our hearts.

Growing Up

Jason was born on Dad’s birthday in 1971.  He continued to follow his father’s footsteps, and along with Angus, went to Castle Park prep school as a boarder. He used to recall his first night at Castle Park in the Blue dorm with the excitement of being away from home, his new friend Gus asking if it was time to “go home now” - unfortunately they wouldn’t get home until the first term was over, 3 months later... It is here where the first glimpses of his competitive sporting legacy were unearthed. He excelled at the butterfly at swimming galas, played hockey, tennis, rugby and cricket, notably winning the Batting average Cup in his final year, which he liked to remind us about at every single family get together.  He was also a regular at the “Pigs Table” which was reserved for misbehaving pupils at meal times. His musical abilities (or lack thereof), which he clearly inherited from Dad, were first spotted at Castle Park by a recorder teacher who begged him to leave her class, but he did join the school choir, only, we are told, so that he could enjoy the lavish post-concert teas.

After Castle Park Jason went to St. Columba’s College, where he challenged the teachers with his evasive cognitive techniques - and with such success, that his Leaving cert results convinced our parents to send the remaining 4 of us to Wesley College instead!

He continued playing rugby at Columbas, starting as a chubby Prop and ending up a gangly Second Row as he sprouted vertically to 6’ 5”. He also won the first of his legendary Leinster hockey medals during his time at Columbas.

Sports

Jason ultimately proved to be a bit of a journey man hockey player, playing with Railway, Corinthians and Pembroke, before finally settling down at YMCA, where me and Jonny also played. He told us he was scouted every time, but each time after starting out on the 1sts or 2nds he typically found his natural place on the 4ths, and most recently on the YM 6ths. It was on the YM 4ths, under captain and friend Graham Walker, and wearing their famous orange wife beater strip - which Jason loved wearing to show off his Dad bod - that he famously won 2 Leinster League Winner medals - Division 6 in 2011/2012 and Division 5 in 2012/2013 - which he used as bragging collateral for his sporting prowess, proudly claiming to be the only Miller to have won 2 Leinster league medals over the age of 40. Supposedly he was on his way to winning a 3rd Leinster medal for the 6ths before Covid struck! 

When not playing for YM he used to love coming to support me and Jonny and was well known in the club in more recent years as being YM 3rd’s No. 1 (and only) supporter!

Jason had an incredible knowledge of useless sporting trivia, and used to love commentating on all sports, not only from the couch and the sidelines, but also while he was playing. Graham told us that he used to shout at the opposition when taking hit outs for YM 4ths and say “who haven’t I passed to and I’ll give you a shot!”. He also enjoyed writing match reports for the weekly YM newsletter during his time on the 4ths, and we thought you would appreciate it if we read out a short extract from one of these completely factually correct reports:

09-Nov-2012

Fellow  League Winners (2011-12), Friends, Fans, Ladies & Gentlemen,

The stats will shout out ‘5 wins in a row’ and in fairness there are a lot of teams in the club who would kindly swap to be in our position, but I suppose at our level (and in Lyonzers infinite quest for perfection) we have to look at the way we won. This came down, in the writer’s opinion, to a couple of key moments throughout the game.

If you were to listen to the talk in all the pubs throughout Dublin 4, as they went through the weekly ritual of analysing our game, the key moments certainly included the ‘rare’ reverse goal by Iain Walker, the inspired subbing on of Tobin and Miller which led to the second goal but the award clearly went to an incredible bit of skill from Jason ‘Mickey Quinn’ Miller (Google it for anyone under 30 – ‘The fastest man over 1 yard’).

To set the scene, Geoff Walker made one of his mazy runs and just as he reached within 4 yards of the circle he let fly a rasping shot into the circle…this is where opinion differs as to what happened and in fairness what we are describing happened in the blink of an eye.…. A small portion of the sizeable crowd thought that the ball merely hit off a defender and into the top of the goal…the true connoisseurs of the sport recognised the incredible contribution of JM as he seized upon all his experience to change the direction of the ball and deflect it past the keeper. One supporter, located in the corporate section of the ground, summed it up when he commented that……”it all happened so fast……it was as if he didn’t touch the ball at all!”

Jason did fancy himself as a hockey version of ‘Ross O’Carroll Kelly’ as you’ve just heard.  

Competition

Subconsciously realising that he was never going to really succeed in ‘mainstream’ sports, Jason worked out that the only way that he was going to achieve world domination in the sporting world was to invent his own games with intricate rules, ‘hey, I don’t make the rules’, typically evolving to make sure he ended up as the winner under a minute technicality. Every family gathering involved competitive sports of some kind, croque-ball, patio-bounce-ball, Peck Pinball to name a few.

Jason was a fierce competitor, on the sports field, playing cards, in a game of ‘see how many Ferrero Rocher you can eat in a minute’, or especially if he noticed that you had received a larger slice of cake. On Christmas Day he would often use a large serving dish as opposed to a normal plate for his main course, just to make sure he had the biggest meal in the family. In my house, just inside the door, is a height chart of the whole family, obviously with his name at the top. Underneath his name, with arrows pointing down he has inscribed the word “losers”. This was one area where no-one in our family could beat him. He even used to request a lemon cake for his birthday instead of his preferred chocolate cake, which Dad always got, knowing that everyone else preferred chocolate, so that left more of it for himself!

Jason was a passionate sports fan and would watch any and all sports on TV. He particularly liked to watch Formula One, Premier league football, Leinster and Irish Rugby, WWE Wrestling, and UFC - with a memorable Miller Brother’s trip to Vegas in 2018 where we all went to watch Conor McGregor fight Khabib. In fact, we have no doubt that he held on long enough last weekend to make sure he heard the results of UFC 269 and the thrilling finale to the Formula 1 championship.

He resisted the strong temptation to join Ireland’s greatest accounting firm, KPMG, and his first job was in the mailroom at Peter Owen Advertising.  This was followed by selling Cadbury’s chocolates (we got lots of out of date Easter eggs and Selection boxes in that era), then selling Guinness before diverting to a lengthy stint at Milano’s Pizzeria on Dawson Street.   His observation skills were very astute and he worked out very accurately and quickly which customers were the most generous tippers and how best to charm them (Jason would let you know it definitely wasn’t professional soccer players).  

Jason could sell anything, a valuable skill gained from the university of life.  As his sister-in-law Dana used to say he could ‘talk a dog off a meat truck’. While school offered him independence and a confidence to achieve, he found it easy to talk to anyone, he made people feel relaxed, a fountain of knowledge able to turn a conversation to match the company, with quick wit and a friendly smile.

After many years in property at Colliers and Murphy Mulhall, Jason turned down a significant job offer in Europe, which would have meant constant travelling, to stay closer to home and be present as his girls were growing up. Instead he finally went out on his own with Miller Commercial and Miller Residential. And personally, he was instrumental in helping all of us in buying and selling our own homes.

Super Dad

Jason met the love of his life, and best friend, Sandra in 1997 and quickly started a family.  In true Protestant fashion, he found himself the father of 5 beautiful girls, Annabella, Eva, Alex, BB and Tessa-May, all of them his absolute pride and joy. Although unique individually, they have common traits of self-confidence, self-reliance, maturity and a bond that will keep them together wherever they are; and each one of them is a credit to his memory.  

His time in the cold Borstal-esque corridors of boarding school, prepared him well for fatherhood. He was a hands-on father from the very beginning, waist deep in the birthing pool during 4 home births.  Unlike Dad, he was an expert nappy changer and was full of handy baby managing tips which he passed on to all of us as we followed his route into parenthood, though we did willingly let him add the ‘most children’ competition title to his accolades.  He has been a fantastic uncle to all of our kids, affectionately known to most of them as “Big Daddy”, though he never was able to tell any of the twins apart [often calling Rebecca’s twins Darach and Ronan, “Bill and/or Bob”, and Marcus’ twins Zara and Leonora, “Zaranora”!].  Outnumbered 6 to one in his house, he always found time to be a Super Dad, turning up to any Whitechurch fetes, Girls Brigade events, hockey matches, music lessons, basketball games, orchestra concerts, the list goes on and on. Any activity the girls enjoyed or participated in, Jason was there to support, and no audience was complete without Jason blocking the view of another parent seated behind. This is his 20th year as a Whitechurch National School dad.  That has to be a record.  He has seen, and supported, it all!

He even became a TikTok star earlier this year, garnering over 1.5M views of his reactions to RuPaul’s Drag Race, recorded, and heavily edited by Annabella. The videos received thousands of comments from fans across the world and even one of the star Drag Queens, Denali ‘Lemme break the ice’ pronounced her love for him…‘Love you bestie’...during a special video she sent to him for his 50th birthday.

He loved good food and was an excellent chef, originally learnt from Mum, constantly tweaking and improving, always cooking vast quantities of grub for his family. He became a vegan more recently and would constantly be sharing great recipes he found with us all. Especially his “Vegan Gravy” which appeared at every meal, including most recently at a lovely family gathering we had for Thanksgiving just three weeks ago hosted by Angus, Dana, Lucy and Finn at my house in Bray.

Selfless

When he was first diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, it would have been easy to forgive him for being angry. But you would never know anything was wrong - he accepted it immediately with a stubborn optimism that he could beat it and help others along the way. Open emotion was not one of Jason’s traits, he wanted no fuss, to get on with it.  He quickly adapted to what life had thrown at him and lived each day with hope and showing no self-pity. With Sandra, they worked tirelessly with doctors in the USA and Germany looking for cutting edge treatments, and a process to find a cure. The endless trips to Germany were not in vain as it is hard to know exactly how many people will be helped by the experimental medicine he received.

Friends

Judging by the incredible outreach in recent weeks, it was obvious that Jason had a lot of friends and made a lasting impression on so many people. People he grew up with, school friends, colleagues, the school, parties, at matches, nurses at the hospitals, anyone in any situation – especially embarrassing his kids when talking to randomers in a shop. His friendly smile, a knowing “How are Yeh”, always so bright and happy and willing to chat and share a quick story or a Simpson’s analogy  - such a wonderfully positive person. He kept in touch with old friends, meeting for espresso or a quick sandwich and calling on birthdays. 

In recent weeks over 1100 people gave to Jason’s fundraiser, highlighting the respect and love for Jason so many people shared. Some who donated didn’t even know him, they simply admired his bravery and the way he fought this terrible disease. 

We are incredibly proud of him and we finish with the words that family, friends and colleagues have shared with us over the last week.

Super Dad…Warrior…. Selfless… Humble… Funny…Witty…A great listener…

Inspirational….Competitive….a Sports Fanatic…Stubborn….A Great Friend

He was a much loved Son, a Brother, a Friend, the most wonderful Husband to Sandra, and Super Dad to Annabella, Eva, Alex, BB and TM.

A true lasting legacy that will be remembered forever. 

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[Written by Jason's siblings - Angus, Rebecca, Samantha, Marcus and Jonny]