Joyce Miller

Volunteer to be honored by Boys & Girls Club

Joyce Miller stands by a column in the foyer of her home in Conway. Miller, one of the original board members of the Boys & Girls Club of Faulkner County, will be honored by the nonprofit organization at its fundraiser July 28 for her longtime support. Bill Hegeman of Conway, who chaired a capital campaign to build the current facility, said the honor is “certainly well-deserved.”
Joyce Miller stands by a column in the foyer of her home in Conway. Miller, one of the original board members of the Boys & Girls Club of Faulkner County, will be honored by the nonprofit organization at its fundraiser July 28 for her longtime support. Bill Hegeman of Conway, who chaired a capital campaign to build the current facility, said the honor is “certainly well-deserved.”

Joyce Miller, who traveled the world with her military husband, always heard him talk about his love for the Boys & Girls Club, and it became her passion when they moved to Conway.

Miller will be honored July 28 by the Boys & Girls Club of Faulkner County for her decades of service to the organization, including serving on its first board of directors in Conway.

“Someone called and told me they wanted to honor me, and I burst into tears because it was so unexpected. I had no idea,” she said, getting a little teary-eyed recalling it.

She said her husband, Bill, who died in 2005, would have been proud of her.

She was born in Pottsville, but her family moved to Russellville when she was about 11. Bill grew up in Pine Bluff, and Joyce said he talked about racing with his friends to the Boys Club, as it was known then, as a fifth-grader. He played sports at the club and spent many hours there.

The couple met at Arkansas Polytechnic College, now Arkansas Tech University, in Russellville, and falling in love with Bill grounded Joyce’s plans to become a flight attendant.

“I had seen, in like Post magazine, all the beautiful attendants and their hats,” she said. Miller said she thought that would be a fun and glamorous job, so when she was 17 or 18, she wrote American Airlines a letter to express her interest.

Representatives of the airline came to visit Joyce and her parents in Russellville and encouraged Joyce to go to college for a couple of years, then contact the airline again.

“I went to college and met Billy Miller — and I certainly got to travel,” she said, laughing.

They were both in the band — she played clarinet until she squeaked too much in a concert and the director suggested the marimba — and Bill was a drummer. She was also a majorette. Bill was in ROTC.

They were married in 1957.

He first went to military intelligence school in Maryland for a year, and he also went to French-language school in Monterey, California. He was stationed at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where the couple lived for six years, longer than anywhere else, she said.

“We lived on the East Coat and the West Coast,” she said. They lived three years in France and three years in Belgium, where they lived in a renovated 100-year-old home. She said their next-door neighbor was a friendly farmer. “He had horses and a big old wagon, and he’d pull manure down the dirt road. I’d say, ‘Bonjour!’ He was so nice.”

She learned to do brass rubbings when she and her husband lived in Belgium and France. When they lived in Kansas, she taught women in the basement of her home how to reproduce on paper the commemorative brass plaques found in churches. She has several rubbings she made hanging on the walls of her home in Conway, and more tucked away in a closet.

“In Westminster Abbey, you can walk on these. They commemorate people who died — knights or wealthy [people] — and knights were wealthy,” she said. “I just found them fascinating.”

She raised the couple’s three children while Bill did she isn’t sure what — because he was in military intelligence, “He loved to say, ‘Honey, I couldn’t tell you,’ and I said, ‘Let’s get under the pillow; maybe you can tell me there.’ He said, ‘No, I can’t tell you there, either.’”

She said he was away two years, a year each at different times, during the Vietnam War. When he was in Vietnam, she came back to Conway with their children. Miller said she loved traveling as a military wife.

“Fortunately for him, I considered it an adventure. A lot of women were scared. I loved it; I loved the experience of living in a different country,” she said.

She continued to get her education — she earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and received a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

When Bill retired from the military after 26 years, they moved to Russellville, and Joyce got a job at Arkansas Tech recruiting teachers, while Bill had different roles, including alumni-affairs director and sports-information director. “He loved to write,” she said.

He took a job at the University of Central Arkansas as director of corporate relations, “and he loved UCA and everything that went along with that,” she said. They moved to Conway in the 1980s, she said.

She became a therapist at Counseling Associates in Conway and spent years helping others.

“I just like people,” she said. “I loved Counseling Associates; I loved it.”

Miller’s community involvement includes serving on the boards of the Community Foundation of Faulkner County and the Conway Symphony Orchestra, and she sings in the First United Methodist Church choir in Conway — just like she did as a child with her mother at the Pottsville First United Methodist Church — and plays handbells.

Two framed documents dedicated to Miller hang unobtrusively on the wall of her husband’s home office: One is a letter from the White House in 2010 praising her for receiving the President’s Volunteer Service Award, and an award called the Order of Aaron and Hur, signed by Army Maj. Gen. Kermit Johnson, for her “humble service” as chapel publicist in Kansas.

In the late 1980s, a newspaper notice was published asking anyone who was interested in founding a Boys & Girls Club in Conway to attend a meeting.

“There were about 60 people there who were excited about that, and I was one of them,” she said.

Miller was chairwoman of the first board.

“It was more mentoring at first, play and mentoring — and educational opportunities,” he said. “As a board, we’d go play with the kids. We’d play basketball and stuff.”

Tom Huff was the club’s first director, and Miller said she took Huff out to lunch once a week.

“I’d say, ‘What do you need? What do you want from us?’ I was such a novice,” she said. “I honestly give him credit for the success of the first run.”

Miller also served as chairwoman of the state alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs and attended a national conference.

The Boys & Girls Club of Faulkner County headquarters, the Bob Nabholz Unit, was in a small building in downtown Conway for years. The club built its main facility in 2013 at Robins Street and South German Lane. “It has grown tremendously,” Miller said.

Miller said she served on the board for many years, and she stays in touch by dropping in at the club from time to time. When her grandson sells Boy Scout popcorn, Miller buys several big tins for the Boys & Girls Club kids to eat while watching movies, and she donates books to the club’s library.

“I still want to be connected because it’s so important to me,” she said.

Board member Bryan Quinn, a past president, said Miller is being honored because of her unwavering support.

“Her husband went to the Boys & Girls Club, and it had a big impact on his life, so it became important to her,” Quinn said. “She was one of those ladies we could always count on to do whatever we needed at the very last minute. We needed to sell one more table [at the fundraiser] the last two or three years, and she would always step up and do it and bring her friends.”

The Black and White Affair is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. July 28 at the Centennial Event Center in Conway. It includes dinner, dancing, silent and live auctions — and Miller’s recognition. Tickets are $50, and more information is available by calling (501) 329-8849.

Miller said although her love of the Boys & Girls Club was through her husband’s interest at first, “it made such a difference in my life, and you can make a difference in the lives of others.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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