Lisa Miller stands in front of a collection of posters advertising several years of the Common Ground Fair in her Somerville home. A public health consultant, Miller moved to Maine in 1977 where she launched a career, raised a family, and served three terms in the Maine House of Representatives, among other things. (Sherwood Olin photo)
According to Lisa Miller, one of the best ways to enjoy the beauty of the United States is by rail. Slower and more expensive than an airplane flight, but with more comfort and amenities than a car ride, long distance travel by rail is an underrated pleasure, Miller said.
Miller and her husband of 52 years, Roy Miller, have just returned to their Somerville home from their most recent excursion, during which they traveled up the West Coast and into Canada. It is one of several lengthy train trips the Millers have made in recent years, including four trips across the country.
“All my friends now call me up and say, ‘What should we do? Which train trip?’” Lisa Miller said. “It’s fun. I highly recommend it.”
The Millers’ interest in train travel dates back more than 20 years to when they took an extended trip on the West Coast in 2004. According to Lisa Miller, in the 2010s and early 2020s the couple started feeling a little responsible for all the air pollution they were contributing to while flying to visit their middle son, Brian, who was working as a forester in eastern Europe.
Travel by rail not only fits the Millers philosophically; its fits their lifestyle. Both are nominally retired although Roy Miller still works one or two days a week as a clinician and Lisa Miller still does some consulting as the opportunity arises. Nowadays, one of their main priorities is being grandparents to their four grandchildren.
Train travel has also helped while Lisa Miller is recovering from a pair of surgeries in the past year, one on each shoulder.
“The reason that we’ve done so much train stuff lately is because of these operations,” she said. “Once you have a shoulder operated on, you can’t drive for six weeks. I can’t ski. I can’t garden. I can’t swim at the Y. I can’t do squat but sit home and do my exercises and read or watch TV. So we thought, let’s just get on a train and watch the world go by.”
Compared to a flying, travel by rail is more expensive upfront, but Miller notes train travel can include lodging and meals. Amenities include an observation car with big windows and bathroom and shower facilities.
“If you think of it as a hotel room and meals, and you get some great meals on trains, it’s not that expensive because you’ve got two nights that would be hotel rooms and what, maybe 10-15 meals,” she said. “We get one of little teeny sleepers called roomettes because we’re little teeny people and it works for us. It’s quite an adventure.”
California transplants, the Millers arrived in Maine in 1977 when Roy Miller accepted a residency at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. Statistically speaking, the Millers knew doctors were more likely to settle in areas where they did their residency so they evaluated their options carefully. Roy Miller’s final choices came down to North Carolina, rural New Jersey, and Maine, and the couple favored Maine.
After completing his residency in 1980, Roy Miller wanted to work in a rural or community based health center. Recruited by Sheepscot Valley Health Center in Coopers Mills, he needed to live in proximity to Augusta, which brought the Millers to Somerville.
“We really loved Bethel, but it was way too far,” Lisa Miller said. “So we looked at Belgrade and Coopers Mills, and I forget, another place or two and we got recruited by the local ambulance crew, first responders, many of whom were serving on the board of this new health center that was forming.”
The Millers met in high middle school when they were both growing up in California’s Bay Area. Graduating high school in 1969, Lisa Miller said she was fortunate enough to grow up when and where she did. Among her high school classmates, her early claim to fame was booking the Grateful Dead, then a new, local band, to play a dance at her high school. However, the Bay Area today barely resembles the California of her childhood.
“I grew up there when probably half of Santa Clara Valley was still orchards,” she said. “Now it’s all houses and tech industry.”
After high school the Millers went on to attend Stanford University together, marrying before Roy Miller entered medical school at the University of California, San Diego.
“Roy knew he was about to enter medical school and then residency and then practice, so this was going to be the last time we could do an extended trip anywhere,” Lisa Miller said. “So we got married in Palo Alto in 1973 and then we went to Europe for four months.
Lisa and Dr. Roy Miller stand next to the sign for the Dr. Roy Miller Medical Building in Coopers Mills in August 2019. The Sheepscot Valley Health Center Board of Directors renamed the building in Roy MiIler’s honor following his retirement from full-time practice in January 2019. (LCN file)
We rented a Renault, and finagled some money from our parents, saying ‘You don’t have to pay for college, so give us a little of that,’ so they did.”
Having graduated from Stanford with a degree in human biology, Lisa Miller was eventually accepted into the public health program at the University of Michigan, emerging with a her master’s degree in time to move to Maine with her husband.
“One might say my work is in public health, but I never worked for government,” she said. “Most people think of public health as a government position, but I felt it was a kind of Swiss Army knife kind of profession. I knew a lot about analyzing data. I could write big health reports. I recruited physicians for a while. I ran grants on cardiovascular disease. I wrote a bazillion grants. I did analyses of tuberculosis and other diseases for nonprofits.”
In Maine, Lisa Miller worked for a nonprofit and as a consultant while the couple’s three sons were very young. In 1999, she secured a position as the director of the Bingham Program, a Boston-based charitable endowment dedicated to improving health care in Maine. Miller remained in the position for 20 years, retiring in 2019, the same year her husband retired from his full-time position at Sheepscot Valley Health Center.
“It was a great job,” she said. “It had a lot of flexibility; a very tiny foundation, but it was sort of like the mouse that roared. We did a lot of innovative stuff, a lot of partnerships, a lot of recruiting people to do this or that with us. Having a degree in public health was perfect for that kind of work.”
Working for the Bingham Program, Miller was used to testifying before lawmakers in Augusta so she was already familiar with how the institution operated when she decided to run for the Maine House. Before entering state politics, her only previous experience had been six year’s service on the Somerville School Committee and she served 20 years as Somerville’s health officer.
Elected in November 2004, Miller represented House District 52, which then consisted of Somerville, Whitefield, Washington, Chelsea, Hibbert’s Gore, and part of Jefferson.
“I knew when I ran I could totally govern,” she said. “I been hanging around Augusta and testifying before the Legislature for years before I got elected, and I had been in the halls a lot. I wasn’t worried about the governing part. I was worried about the door to door, and then I had no idea that constituent service would be such a huge part.”
Working on constituent issues was an extremely rewarding but time-consuming task, Miller said. However, the real surprise to her, a self-described “natural introvert,” was how much she enjoyed door-to-door campaigning.
“That was really hard,” she said. “Really hard, but once I got out there, it was terrific. I remembered a lot about where people lived, and they were amazed at what I remembered, and I knew about their dogs and their chickens, and their cows. That was fun, but I had to get out there and do it, and that was the hardest part.”
After serving three consecutive terms, Miller was unseated by Deb Sanderson, R-Chelsea, in 2010. She lost a rematch by narrower margin in 2012, her last bid for public office. She continues to be a supporter of the Lincoln County Democratic Committee, which she calls a “really active, really dynamite county committee.”
A committed Democrat, Miller, 74, said she supports Maine Gov. Janet Mills, but she acknowledges complaints from younger generations about members of the baby boom generation clinging to power. Miller said she has some reservations about the 77-year-old Mills, who is currently running for the U.S. Senate, even as she calls the governor “sort of an Energizer Bunny.”
“It’s a fine line, because there’s a certain level of ageism, you know?” Miller said. “People have things to contribute into their 80s and 90s. It’s a continuum of ability and capability, and there’s nothing that says a 77-year-old cannot do this job. I know she can do this job. I’m a Democrat, a pretty strong Democrat, and I’m a little torn about this upcoming primary, but I think it’s time for the younger middle age generation to be taking up the reins.”
In the immediate future, Lisa Miller said she hopes to recover enough from shoulder surgery to get some skiing in this winter before she goes to visit her sister in Hawaii next year. Traveling is a wonderful pastime Miller said, but its extra special to have a place like Somerville to come home too.
“Like any small town, Somerville has its stresses and strains, but then you have an ice storm, and everybody just bellies up and helps each other like crazy, or an accident on the road, and everybody’s out there and there’s that,” she said. “That quiet, watching each other’s back stuff that rural Mainers do, that is really quite wonderful. You don’t seem to experience that in suburban California.”
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