Imagine being 13 years old, in Bryant, Alabama. Working outside at the family store. It’s summertime, it’s hot. You’ve got all these outdoor chores to do. Just to stay sane, you take your transistor radio. You listen to the great JET FLI out of Chattanooga, 35 miles away. There’s a phone booth outside, so you call the disc jockeys, because that sounds like a fun job.
Bill Miller was very nice and encouraging to me when I called him. I asked him for advice about getting into radio. He told me was from Polk County, Tennessee, and he had to work on toning down his southern accent. He asked me where I was from, and he told me I should probably work on my accent too. He was very kind and welcoming to me.
He moved on to various radio stations all over the country. He didn’t stay long at some of them, so he chose the nickname Suitcase. It was always packed, ready for the next move. Suitcase Simpson.
I didn’t actually meet him in person until I had become a DJ, at his old station, WFLI. He was in Knoxville. By this time I was about 20, he was in his late 20s, and he was on 15Q in Knoxville. And then I lost track of him for about 25 years.
Bill Miller at WIVK in Knoxville, 1978
This was before the internet, and before email. Every now and then, someone would ask me, “Whatever became of Bill Miller” and I had no idea. I later found out he was in Oklahoma, or Florida, or Indiana, or somewhere else. He was playing the hits, rock and roll, or country, or whatever. Or he was anchoring radio news on a national network. He was selling real estate. He was announcing ball games and sports. But I didn’t know all this at the time, I would find out later.
In the early 2000s, one of our mutual friends died, and I saw Bill at the memorial. We shared some old stories, and I heard some new ones for the first time. We agreed to stay in touch, and we started exchanging emails. I would print them out and keep them, because they were so well-written and funny.
I still have them today.
Around that time, some of the Chattanooga deejays began holding an annual reunion, in December every year. The Veterans of Radio Wars. It was the highlight of the year. We’d pass around the microphone, mention all the stations we worked at, and some funny stories from our lives and careers. Bill was the life of the party, he laughed the loudest, he had a lot of stories, and plenty of stations to choose from. Radio was like the wild west back then, and Bill had the stories to prove it.
Bill Miller and Garry Mac in 2011
Around 2011, one of our old Chattanooga radio friends who had moved to Florida came to his first reunion. He was going around the room introducing, or re-introducing himself to the guys. He walks up to Bill, and says, I’m Bob Todd, and Bill says I’m Bill Miller. Bob says, “Have we met before?” Bill says, “Absolutely, you fired me 40 years ago!”
Everyone laughed. The passage of time can heal a lot of wounds.
Bill made the long drive to our reunions for the rest of his life, all the way to last December, and he seemed to appreciate them more as the years went by.
One of the last times I saw him at Life Care in Cleveland, he was in great spirits, and he was telling me about how his phone had been malfunctioning. He was able to get messages, but he couldn’t send them. I asked him what went wrong. He explained that his phone must have gotten dropped in with his laundry at Life Care, and it got the full washer and dryer treatment. I said, “Now Bill, that would make a good column.” He said, “I’ve been trying to think of something to write, and you’re right, I need to tell that story.” But time ran out.
During our phone conversations, lunches, and even visits to sick friends in recent years, I got to know him better than ever. He carried a little of Polk County and Delano with him everywhere he went. That natural small town kindness. He was a big market talent, with a small ego and big heart. He was proud of his community, his school, his family.
Bill was one of my heroes, and I told him that. He thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t. That kindness he showed me when I was a kid, helped encourage me to get into the business that I’ve been in all my life. When I was doing a weekend radio show a few years ago, I got Bill to record some of the commercials for me. I had two reasons for doing that. One, he made my show sound better, and two, I would pay him by buying him lunch, so he had to come to Chattanooga to see me.
Bill never said a bad word about anybody, and nobody ever said anything bad about Bill.
I will always miss Bill, his radio-perfect voice, and his always-positive personality. Above all, for a country boy like me whose dream was to be on the radio, Bill Miller was the perfect role model.
