Lee M. Miller ’60

Lee died of heart failure Jan. 31, 2011, at his home in East Syracuse, N.Y.

Born and raised in Trenton, N.J., Lee attended the Peddie School, where he participated in football, drama, journalism, the science club, and more. He majored in chemistry at Princeton, was varsity basketball manager junior year, and joined Terrace Club.

After Princeton, Lee studied at the Lutheran Theological Seminary and was ordained as a minister. He subsequently earned a doctorate in education at Columbia University and received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Hartwick College.  

Beginning in 1965 as assistant pastor of First Lutheran Church in Jamestown, N.Y., Lee also was called to the First English Lutheran Church in Lockport and went on to became assistant to the bishop and then bishop of the Upstate New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (1992-2002). He is remembered as warm, positive, and down to earth. As bishop, he made “pray first” the synod’s motto.

He is survived by Joan, his wife of 45 years; their children, Beth Ann and the Rev. Lee M. Miller II, and three grandchildren. The class sends deepest sympathy to the family.