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September 18, 2015
Ann Arbor, Michigan
We
gather today to honor and celebrate the life of Dr. Jim Miner.
And
what a life it was: a life of accomplishment; a life of dedication; a life of
deep intellectual curiosity; a life of commitment to his patients; a life of
conversation—and the occasional poker game—with close friends; a life of
completely fulfilled partnership with his wife, Deanna; a life of boundless
pride in his three children: Kriste, Brett, and Scott.
Sigmund
Freud, who Jim revered, said that: “love and work are the cornerstones of our
humanness.” And in Jim Miner this prescription was fully realized.
Jim’s
life was uncontestably a life of love. To say that he loved Deanna is a
masterpiece of understatement. As for his children, well, he loved them almost
as much as he loved bragging about them. He loved his coterie of close friends.
He loved to listen—which he did with exquisite care and without judging or
condemning. He loved to think. He loved his work.
Ernest
Jones, one of Freud’s biographers, observed that, in Vienna, Freud’s life
“consisted of little besides work” and casual observers may have had the same
impression of Jim. Indeed, his passion for his work was conspicuous. That he
was privileged to do so much of it at a desk right next to Deanna’s made that
blessing all the greater.
His
hard work led him to great heights. Born in a small town in Iowa, Jim became a
distinguished psychoanalytic therapist who was widely respected within his
profession. Early in his career, he served on the faculty of the University of
Michigan Department of Psychiatry. Jim’s tireless dedication to his work is
evidenced by the fact that, at the time of his passing, he was still seeing
patients.
But,
like all interesting people, Jim was complicated and he was anything but
one-dimensional. Indeed, when you consider the breadth and variety of Jim’s
gifts and achievements it seems difficult to believe we are talking about only
one man.
He
was an athlete: a football player from the fourth grade through high school,
where he helped his team win a state championship; then an avid runner; then a
competitive tennis player. As I understand it, the only sport at which Jim did
not excel was sailing catamarans, at which he was apparently somewhat
dangerous.
As
was characteristic of Jim, he was not just a participant in sport—he was a
student of it. Over the years, he brought under his command vast stores of
statistics, particularly about football. Of course, the dazzling memory that he
enjoyed throughout most of his life helped him retain all of this information,
but the exercise was not about accumulating data—it was about achieving a deep
familiarity with and understanding of a subject. That is what Jim did, in every
dimension and aspect of his life: he sought to understand.
While
we are on this theme of sport, we should of course acknowledge Jim’s zeal for
Michigan football. Zeal might seem like a strange word for a man who so often
presented as elegant, distinguished, thoughtful, perhaps a bit reserved and
removed from the crowd. But make no mistake about it: Jim was maize and blue,
through and through.
Who
but a died-in-the-wool Wolverine fan would move heaven and earth to buy the
house that had once been owned by Fielding Yost, Michigan’s football coach in
the early part of the twentieth century? If you do not understand why this
meant so much to Jim then let me point out—as I think a disciple of sports
statistics like Jim would want me to do—that while at Michigan Yost won six
national championships and went 165-29-10 and that his famed “point-a-minute
squad” outscored their opponents by 2,821 to 42. Those were the days.
But
subjects other than work and sports piqued Jim’s interest as well. He was fascinated
by ancient history and when he and Deanna traveled to Rome he spent hours
wandering in the Forum and the ruins. When I met with Deanna to talk about our
service today she brought with her Jim’s latest excursion into the topic: a thick,
intimidating looking treatise on ancient history, marked where he had finished
his reading the previous day.
We
can imagine Jim working his way through that book, asking the questions that
intrigued him throughout his life. How do people behave? Why do they do it?
What is to be learned from it? In his eighty-first year, Jim’s curiosity about
these issues was no less keen than it had been in every prior year.
Jim
also had the spirit of a naturalist, perhaps instilled in him during his
childhood years attending a summer camp in Minnesota. He knew a great deal
about trees and wildflowers and the natural world. But he was particularly
fascinated by birds and could identify countless species by their calls and
songs. And, of course, because Jim did not just care about everything that interested him, but also cared for everything (and everyone) that
interested him, he and Deanna set up twelve
feeding stations in their backyard. It is safe to say that no bird that was
ever observed and studied by Jim Miner went away from the experience hungry.
I
do not mean to suggest by all of this celebration that Jim’s life was without
its challenges. His eighty-one years brought him many battles and he came
perilously close to losing some of them. He was revived after drowning while
swimming; Scott saved him during a critical cardiac incident; the list goes on
and on. On a remarkable multitude of occasions, death took Jim by the arm and
started to lead him away. And, yet, over and over again Jim managed to slip
from its grasp and to stay with us, to have another morning to hear the birds
sing, to have another afternoon to watch football, to have another evening to
read, and think, and wonder.
Indeed,
Jim evaded death so many times that we could not be blamed if we had come to
think of him as indestructible. Resilient people do this to us—they persuade us
though their tenacity that they will be with us forever. And here’s the thing:
it turns out that it’s true.
Jim
remains with us in the lessons that his life conveys. Love what you do. Work
hard. Think deeply. Set high standards. Be professional in your endeavors. Take
time to play. When you become interested in something, learn as much as you can
about it. Listen closely. Try to understand people—even those people,
especially those people, who no one else understands. Be one with your partner.
Help your children achieve—and then tell everyone about it whenever and
wherever you can. Do not forget to pay attention to the wildflowers and the
birds.
Today
we celebrate the remarkable life that Jim Miner made out of his time on earth.
But, of course, we also grieve. We do not grieve for him: he passed from this
life peacefully, he is at rest, his worries are behind him, his anxieties are extinguished,
he fulfilled so much of what he sought to do. Rather, we grieve for ourselves
and for those times when we will feel his absence.
But
I suspect that in the days, and weeks, and months, and years that come we will
more frequently feel his presence. We
will continue to experience his influence. We will continue to hear his voice.
We will continue to talk to him—not just as if he were beside us, but as if he
were inside us, because, of course,
he is. He is in our hearts and our minds and our memories, where he had already
lived for so long, and where he will stay.
When
I met with Deanna on Wednesday I asked her: “Where do you think you will feel
Jim’s presence most?” And she said: “Wherever the birds are.” Yes, that’s it,
exactly—because the birds are all around us, now, and forever more.
*
I would like to close
our service by reading to you from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous definition
of success. In the last few days, as I have pondered Jim’s life, it has struck
me that this fits perfectly with how he lived, and why everyone here loved and
admired him:
“[T]o win the respect of intelligent people
and [the] affection of children;
to appreciate beauty, to find the best
in others; to leave the world a bit
better, whether by a healthy child
a garden patch or a redeemed
social condition; to know even
one life has breathed easier because
you have lived. This is to have
succeeded.”
Thank you, Jim, for the
respect you earned from your colleagues and friends; for the deep affection you
inspired in your wonderful wife and children; for finding the beauty in
wildflowers and birds and ancient ruins and the complexities of human behavior;
for helping your patients breathe easier; for leaving our world better.
Your memory is a
blessing to us all.
