In Memoriam Jim Miner

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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.

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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.