Timothy C. Miller, town justice, history teacher, activist, at 69
Timothy Charles Miller of Rensselaerville, N.Y., a retired town justice and longtime history teacher, died Tuesday at Albany Medical Center. He was 69.
He was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Mich.
He attended Western Michigan University and was a graduate of City College of New York, the University of Wisconsin and earned his PhD in 16th century French history at the University of Rochester.
Mr. Miller joined Teacher Corps in 1971 and worked with the Winnebagos in Black River Falls, Wis., where he helped remove and replace public school textbooks that contained false and bigoted representations of Native Americans.
He taught two years in a bilingual school house in Norton, Vt., before he earned his doctorate at the University of Rochester.
He wrote a dissertation on censorship policy in France, which triggered a lifelong passion for the freedom and responsibility of the press.
Mr. Miller taught U.S. history and economics at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, N.Y., and later became chairman of its history department.
He was a basketball coach at his high school and was head of the World Hunger Group and Youth in Action student group.
Mr. Miller worked as a consultant on school reform across the nation as a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools National Faculty at Brown University.
He studied literature of the Holocaust and the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as a National Endowment of the Humanities fellow and remained an activist throughout his life.
After retirement, Mr. Miller and his wife lived in Rensselaerville, N.Y., where he served as treasurer of Conkling Hall, a board member of the Historical Society and as a member of the Water and Sewer Committee. He served for five years as town justice.
He is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, Linda; two daughters, Jennifer of Boston and Carrie Dunn of Niskayuna, N.Y.; a son, David of Rensselaerville, N.Y.; a brother, Peter of Cleveland; seven grandchildren and several nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today at Conkling Hall, Rensselaerville, N.Y.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Rensselaerville Library to add to the library’s collection of history books.