Terry Miller died Feb 22 from complications due Parkinson’s disease, which he had had since 1993.
After graduation in 1969, he married, went to Navy OCS, graduated, and luckily spent his three years behind a desk at the NSA rather than on a gunboat in Vietnam.
In 1972 he returned to Yale, where he got his M.S., M.Phil, and PhD in computer science. From 1977-1979 he was an assistant professor in computer Science at the University of California San Diego.
Starting in 1979, he left academia and worked in the tech industry, first with Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto. Following 22 years at Sun Microsystems, he left after Sun was acquired by Oracle and finished his career from 2009-2012 at Yahoo and SAIC/Cloudshield.
He and his present wife. Denise Sullivan, married in 1977, moved to Menlo Park, CA in 1979 and have been there ever since. Denise will remain active on Yale1969.org (using Terry’s account).
Terry Miller was a man of few words and dry humor. An Engineering and Applied Science major, his entire 25th Reunion Essay demonstrate both his brevity and his wit:
In 1969 I got married and graduated from Yale. In 1977 I got married again and finished another Yale degree (Ph.D.). (I’m not coming back to school to find out if we have a real pattern here.) Both second career (computer science) and second marriage are still doing well. Much else has changed: location: Connecticut to California; religion: Episcopal to pagan.
Dick Senechal remembers well senior year in the north court of Berkeley, where Terry had a room …
… most notable for being carpeted entirely with two foot carpet samples of all colors. Terry biked hundreds of miles a week and I always thought Parkinsons was a cruel twist of fate for someone so fit.
Terry and his first wife, Jayne, were married senior year at the St. Thomas More chapel. I was in their wedding party and shortly after graduation painted a wedding portrait of them. Rumor had it that when they broke up, they cut the portrait I’d painted in half so they could each keep their own likeness.
Probably the classmate who knew Terry the best was Charlie McCormack who was a dorm mate at Phillips Exeter for three of the four years he and Terry were there. Charlie reports:
Terry and I got to be friends early on through the dorm and through Christ (Episcopal) Church, which required attendance back then! I think we initially chose that one because it was right behind the dorm, and you could roll out of the sack and be at the early service in about 5 minutes. But it stuck, and we both decided to get confirmed there, and we were in the same confirmation class. Freshman year at Yale he gave me a Book of Common Prayer that I still have.
While at Exeter, Terry spent a summer in the Outward Bound program in Maine, and it was a life changing experience for him. I remember him describing his final survival test, being dropped off on a deserted island along the Maine coast with little more than matches, a knife, some fishing line and hooks, water and a sleeping bag, and being told he would be picked up in three days if he was still around. I asked him what he ate, and his response – typical Terry – was “Not much!” Terry was a man of few words, and would never use three or four, when one or two would do.
We became roommates freshman year in a top floor double in Welch Hall, and then our sophomore year in Berkeley College, where we shared a quad with Paul Pilkonis and Dave Guss, adjacent to Tom Fuller, Steve Montewidlo, Marty Rubin and Joe Cobert. (Cobert, Fuller and I were roommates senior year, down the hall from Terry and Dick Senechal among others.)
Terry took his junior year abroad at University of Southampton in England and studied naval architecture there. He was drawn to the outdoors, especially the ocean, and worked a summer at Woods Hole. His family had a beautiful home on the water in Chatham on Cape Cod.
Terry Miller
He was an avid bicyclist as long as I knew him, until his Parkinsons cut that short. At Yale, he upgraded for a short while to a Vespa scooter that he used to ride around on. We took it his home in New Rochelle to visit his Mom one cold winter weekend, and on the way back – him driving and me clinging on to him from behind – we hit a pothole on the Wilbur Cross Parkway. Next thing I know, I’m sitting on the back of this scooter going about 30 mph with no driver. Terry had fallen off, as I did seconds later. Outside of a few bumps, scrapes and bruises there was no harm done except to the Vespa and to Terry’s pride when he had to find a phone to call his Mom to come get us. Lesson learned – never drive a Vespa with your thumbs tucked into your palm because your hands are cold. It was back to the bicycle after that.
He settled in as an engineering major, and, at the time, one of the few who began to concentrate in that new field of computer science. I think he was one of a small handful of classmates to graduate with that concentration. Faced with the issue most of us were dealing with, he elected to go to Navy OCS, and because of his expertise in the field of computers, was detailed immediately to the National Security Agency, and spent his time in the service doing something that he could never tell me about. I remember seeing him in D.C., when I moved there after grad school and trying to pump him for information about what he did. After the second try, he told me in no uncertain terms that if I kept asking he was going to have to “report me.” I stopped asking.
Prior to his year abroad, I had introduced him to Jayne, who I knew through my job at Yale, and they began dating and later married. Dick and I both were in the wedding. Jayne and Terry were later divorced on a very amicable basis, and remained friends throughout his life.
Terry later remarried a wonderful woman, Denise Sullivan, and they enjoyed a full and loving life together. Both were highly skilled professionals in their chosen fields. We kept in touch over the years, and last saw them at our 50th Exeter Reunion in 2015. Jane and I and Terry and Denise had a great time together, and were able to do some catching up.
Although the Parkinsons, which Terry had had for over 20 years by that time, was taking serious toll on him, it certainly did not affect his wonderful mind and memory. Unfortunately, right after the reunion, Terry and Denise were visiting friends and family in New Hampshire and Terry had a fall that resulted in a broken hip. We last visited Terry and Denise in the hospital while he was recovering. That was the onset of a serious and more rapid decline in his physical abilities, which finally caught up with him.
Terry Miller died Feb 22 from complications due Parkinson’s disease, which he had had since 1993.Terry and I got to be friends early on through the dorm and through Christ (Episcopal) Church, which required attendance back then! I think we initially chose that one because it was right behind the dorm, and you could roll out of the sack and be at the early service in about 5 minutes. But it stuck, and we both decided to get confirmed there, and we were in the same confirmation class. Freshman year at Yale he gave me a Book of Common Prayer that I still have.
