Jeffrey Miller

Jeffrey Alan Miller - Service Manager of NAFTA SAP Material Master Data Team

Camera in hand one fine summer day 1979, Jeff Miller took a day off work at the U.S. Department of Energy so he could accompany his steady girlfriend to a press conference at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh

He was doing a special type of freelancing. He was working for free so the woman in his life would be sure to have a usable picture for the Observer Reporter religion page on which she was working.

Shooting with black-and-white film, he captured an image of the tiny Albanian nun, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was using a microphone while she spoke barely above a whisper.

It ran the week of the press conference, and the newspaper re-published the photo in October when Mother Teresa was named recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The only credit the newspaper used in those days was “Observer-Reporter Photo,” but this certainly was a feather in the cap for an amateur who had taken a photography course at Waynesburg College!

It may have been the first time his work saw print, but he always would go on to help out the girlfriend, who later became his wife, and so many others, when the opportunity presented itself.

Jeff was also a published author. Research for his master’s thesis, “The Design and Fabrication of a Total Organic Carbon Analyzer” was funded by a U.S. Department of Energy grant through Oak Ridge, Tenn. He did his course work in analytical chemistry at the State University of New York College at Oswego before building the instrument at U.S. DOE in Bruceton, Allegheny County.

After working full-time at DOE, he joined Mobay Corp., first in New Martinsville, W.Va, then in Pittsburgh. Bayer Corp.'s Material Science Division later became Covestro, where he worked as a service manager of the NAFTA SAP Material Master Data team until his hospitalization March 9. At age 61, he died Saturday, March 18, 2017, in St. Margaret’s Hospital, Aspinwall, of a pulmonary embolism following surgery.

For several years, Jeff, a 1973 graduate of Trinity High School, was an active participant in the planning of the Laboratory Information Management Systems conference, which alternated between Pittsburgh and Europe. He served as conference chairman in 1994.

He had hoped to eventually retire and to concentrate on blacksmithing, woodworking, visiting Civil War sites and scaling fossil cliffs, but this was not to be. He had joined the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America and “Chef Jeff” was also accomplished in the kitchen.

Born in Coshocton, Ohio, he was the oldest son of the late Ronald E. Miller and Janet Bolitho Miller of Baltimore, Ohio, who survives along with two brothers, Randy E. and his wife, Sharon Karluk Miller, and J. Richard Miller and his wife, Nancy Theado, all of Pickerington, Ohio; a sister, Lori Hatfield; his wife, Barbara S. Miller, and their daughter Merrill C. Miller.

Visitation is scheduled from noon to 1 p.m., time of services Saturday, March 25, in the church where he was a member, Our Redeemer Lutheran, 105 Gateshead Drive, McMurray, with luncheon to follow.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 3810-9959, the American Lung Association, 3001 Old Gettysburg Road, Camp Hill, PA 17011 or Abiding Ministries, 731 Excelsior St., Pittsburgh, PA 15210.

Arrangements in care of the Thompson-Marodi Funeral Home, 809 Main St., Bentleyville. Visit www.thompson-marodi.com to leave a condolence message.

To plant memorial trees or send flowers to the family in memory of Jeffrey Miller, please visit our flower store.

Visitation

Saturday March 25th, 2017

12:00pm - 1:00pm

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Memorial Service

Saturday March 25th, 2017

1:00pm

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Wake

Saturday March 25th, 2017

1:30pm

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To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Jeffrey Miller, please visit our floral store.