Howard Burnett Miller ’38 died on December 27, 2004, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Born on August 25, 1917 in Montague, MA, he prepared for college at Turners Falls (MA) High School and became member of Zeta Psi Fraternity at Bowdoin. Following his graduation in 1938, he did research on the black back seagull at Bowdoin’s Kent Island scientific field station off the coast of New Brunswick, Canada. In 1939, he joined the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company in Springfield as a clerk. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1942 to 1946, attaining the rank of captain. After the war, he returned to Massachusetts Mutual, working in sales, and earned his Chartered Life Underwriter designation in 1953. With that company he achieved many distinctions, including the National Quality Award for 1950-82, Springfield Agency Man of the Year in 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1971, and Man of the Year Award for Massachusetts Mutual nationally in 1963. He was president of the American Society of Charter Life Underwriters, Springfield Chapter, in 1958-59 and of the Massachusetts Mutual Agents Association from 1972 to 1974. He retired in 1987. In Springfield he was for some years vice president of the board of directors of the YMCA, and in Wilbraham, where he lived, he served as a member of the Conservation Commission and the Wilbraham United Church. He was married in 1941 to Jane Jackson, who died in 1987, and was married again in 1989 to June Stacy, who survives him, as do two sons, Karl F. Miller of Philadelphia, PA, and Steven K. Miller of Gex, France; two sisters, Margaret Hyde of Shelburne, VT, and Helen Jean Reindl of Montpelier, VT; a brother, Frederick Miller of Chatham, MA; and five grandchildren.