In thanks that the Millers chose Fort Dodge, Iowa

A new memoir by former legislator Helen Miller is a “beautiful freedom story.” It also has lots of examples of how public officials might serve more effectively.

DES MOINES, Iowa – Helen Miller, a highly-regarded Iowa legislator who served the Fort Dodge area for 16 years, has just published her memoir “I Don’t Swim.”

I’ll explain the title later here. But first let me make it plain that this easy-reading 213-page book is so much more than her personal story. It’s a story of how much our nation and state have changed in one long lifetime, with lots of examples of how we can be even better.

Can I make it required reading for all who currently serve in the Iowa legislature? Maybe for starters, the Republican-dominated Senate and House should invite the former Representative Miller back to the Capitol to speak, even if she was (and is) a good Democrat. And if you’re someone who is thinking of running for the legislature, or any other governmental position, you too will benefit from reading how she ran and served so effectively.

It doesn’t put down anybody, or whatever positions you hold on public issues. What it really does is tell you how to get along with people, even those who might be very different than yourself.

The author Helen Miller in a book chat last week at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines.

Helen Miller, a New Jersey native, brought three college degrees and a lot of life’s experience with her when she and husband Dr. Ed Miller moved to Fort Dodge in 1999. She immediately stood out – a tall, fashionable Black woman in her early 50s who had traveled the world, had a deep interest in art and was very personable.

She got involved. Oh, did she ever! And just three years later, she was elected to the first of eight terms in the Iowa House.

“How’d I do it?” she said, talking to an audience of 20 people the other night at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines. “First of all, I knocked on every door in my district – all over Fort Dodge and out in the country, too. I drove my Land Rover out to CAFOs (hog confinements), walked up and said, ‘Hi, I’m Helen Miller. I’m running for the legislature. Tell me what this (hog barn) is all about.’ ”

Get this: She became the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, and even won election endorsements from the Iowa Farm Bureau!

Along life’s way, she found a writing pen “that had the letters ‘H.E.L.P.’ on it, standing for ‘Help Empower Local People.’ That became my campaign motto,” she said. “I’ll never forget one gentleman who, early on, looked at me and said, ‘What kind of legislator are you gong to be?’ I answered, ‘What do you mean?’ He paused and said, ‘A Black legislator?’ I said, ‘What? There’s not a single legislative district in whole state of Iowa with enough Black voters in it to elect a Black person to the legislature! I’m going to be a legislator for all the people.’

“So, I didn’t lead with the fact that I am a Black woman. Oh, people stare at you, of course. And sometimes I was accused of being arrogant. My answer was, ‘I’m not arrogant! I just have a very high opinion of myself! I’m special! Why? I’m special because these people elected me. They think I’m special enough that they elected me to represent them and try to do some good.’ And I’d remind myself that I am ‘enough.’ Sometimes in life, who and what you are, and what you’ve got, is enough.”

Sharing the story at Beaverdale Books.

On the campaign trail, she usually wore one of her collection of pith helmets – those round hats, favorites of U.S. Postal carriers, hats that provide plenty of shade and let air circulate, too. Helen’s collection ranged from very plain pith helmets to very colorful ones. “Sometimes I’d be walking around the neighborhoods in Fort Dodge, wearing one of my pith helmets, and people would mistake me for a mail carrier,” she said. “They’d come out and hand me letters they wanted to send. So I’d take their mail to the Post Office for them.”

Helen Pitts Miller’s family history and her own earlier life prepared her well for all she’s been and done in Fort Dodge and Iowa.

She writes how her parents were among waves of Black people who, in the early decades of the 20^th century, moved north from southern states for industrial jobs and other opportunities – and new life. That storied movement is called the “Great Migration.” Her parents came from the Laurens, South Carolina, area to Newark, N.J., where Helen was born. Their Newark neighborhood was integrated and very diverse, with neighbors and friends of heritages around the world.

“It was a great neighborhood to grow up in because we all looked on each other as equals,” Helen said. “First of all, the older people who’d moved from the South, that generation of my parents, were so focused on the present and future – new homes, new jobs, new neighbors. They really didn’t talk about what Black people had been through in the South. We lived in kind of a bubble that way.”

The growth of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and later was a real awakening for her and many others about Black history. They began learning just how much oppression and racial violence there’d been in the South, and the prospects for it continuing across the country for decades to come.

Her eventual husband Ed Miller grew up in nearby New Brunswick, N.J., but they didn’t meet until both were going to Howard University in Washington, D.C. Helen’s undergraduate degree was in business administration, she later got a master’s in library science and a law degree. Ed was on a pre-med track, then earned his medical degree at Howard, joined the U.S. Air Force after graduation, and served 30 years as a military physician and commander, rising to the rank of colonel.

“We moved 10 or 12 times, all over the world and the U.S., for Ed’s Air Force assignments,” Helen told the crowd at her recent book chat. “Everywhere we went, he’d have a ready-made group of people around him, but it would take me more time to get to know our new neighbors and make new friends. I got pretty good at doing that. Ed and I always said he made our living, and I made our life.”

Meeting new people was even easier when the Millers’ three children were growing up and there were lots of school and family activities.

Helen Miller sharing one passage in her memoir.

With Ed’s retirement from the Air Force in ’99, he became the target of medical recruiters and soon he was being wooed by a group of doctors in a practice in Fort Dodge. “Our initial reaction when we were asked to consider a move to Iowa,” Helen writes in the book, “was, ‘Where is Iowa?’ ”

They decided to fly out for a look, were greeted by other physicians, and then “we headed off on our own to explore” Fort Dodge.

“We stumbled upon three discoveries that did impress us,” she continues in the book. “First, there was a Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, something we did not expect to find in rural White America. This discovery made an impression on us, especially as we did not see a single Black person during our visit. The naming of a street in honor of Dr. King suggested to us that there was an element of progressiveness in the town. Second, owing to the fact that I am particularly interested in art and the arts, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the first municipal art museum in the state of Iowa, the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, was in Fort Dodge… The final observation we made was found in the local newspaper, the Fort Dodge Messenger. In the announcement section for weddings and engagements, appeared the photo of a couple who had recently married. The man was White and the woman Black. Even though the D.C. area, where we lived at the time, was much, much more diverse, this was something I had not seen and had not expected to see here.”

The Millers made the move, and were almost immediately grateful they did. So were Fort Dodgers.

“Helen was involved in so much here, and got to know so many people, she could’ve kept her seat in the legislature as long as she wanted,” Mike McCarville, a former Fort Dodge mayor and economic development director, told me last week. “She was a wonderful ambassador for our community and the entire state.”

Sadly, in 2008 Dr. Ed Miller was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. He died two years later. Helen served eight more years in the Iowa House before deciding to retire. In 2019, she moved to Des Moines to be nearer her daughter Brooke Axiotis, an attorney with Iowa Workforce Development, and Brooke’s family.

Helen’s focus is no longer on the grief she felt so intensely after Ed’s death.

“I have been blessed in my life,” she writes in the book. “Looking back on a home with father and mother, amiable siblings, good schools, lifelong friends, a rewarding and successful work life, children, grandchildren, and now, respectable senior years with reasonably good health loving family, admiring friends, career laurels, financial security, travels, and the ability to continue to serve – all I can say is, wow!”

The idea for Helen Miller to write her memoir took root about four years ago. It developed after she attended, mostly out of curiosity, the first two Okoboji Writers’ Retreats organized by Julie Gammack, who also coordinates the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative (of which I’m a contributing columnist). Gammack and our colleague Rekha Basu gave Miller repeated encouragement to tell her own story.

And now she has, with a lot of computer and editing help from her daughter Brooke Axiotis, and a lot of historical corroboration from her friend Henrietta Parker, with whom Helen attended both high school and college. Parker went on to become a producer of television shows for the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Service. Parker, who now lives in South Carolina, told me she is not surprised that Helen Miller became the leader she’s been in Iowa. “I’ve seen Helen as a leader going clear back to when she was a majorette in our high school marching band,” Parker said. “She was always the glue that held our circle of friends together, too.”

The book.

And, now, about that curious book title, “I Don’t Swim”?

In the book, Miller explains that on a family vacation to the Greek island of Samos, her son-in-law once asked her why she would sit in a chair on the beach while the rest of the family was frolicking in the waters of the Aegean Sea. “…to which I simply replied, ‘I don’t swim’,” she writes in the book.

Then she continues: “Sometime later, I thought about why it was that I did not swim. My parents had migrated to the North and would not have had access to public or private pools or beaches. Their migration to New Jersey would not have caused them to become interested in swimming, as there was still limited access and opportunity for them to swim. They would undoubtedly have had no desire to learn to swim or otherwise engage in the sport, as swimming was not a part of their experiences. It dawned on me how the inability of my parents – and me – to swim was related to the history of Black Americans.

“I thought that if more was understood about the racial history of America, more people would understand the depth of the impact of racism on the simplest of endeavors.”

Helen Miller has done a whole lot to foster such understanding.

And so when she asked me if I would read her new book and write a promotional blurb for the book jacket, I was quick with a yes. And here’s what I wrote:

“NOT SWIMMING is one of the only things that Helen Miller hasn’t done. And even THAT is meaningful in the life of one of Iowa’s most effective state legislators. Her memoir is a beautiful freedom story.”

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