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| Bob Miller and Friends at the Chairs |
There's a hole in the soul of Morningside Heights this summer -- an empty space on the sidewalk where a crowd of people used to gather around Bob Miller. A few weeks ago, as he neared his 93rd birthday, about 150 friends threw him a farewell party at what he called "the chairs," meaning the benches at the western end of 111th Street, a few steps from his apartment building on Riverside Drive. The next day, his two daughters came up from Florida, and moved him down into an assisted living facility near them in the Miami area. He hates it -- "everybody here is old!" he says, and they don't know how to talk to people. "I was spoiled by Morningside Heights," he says. But it was Bob himself who created the social scene in the Heights during the Pandemic era.
It started to form in the summer of 2020, on the street, late at night. He was not afraid to hang out on a street corner -- usually Broadway and 111th, outside Walgreen's -- all alone, in all weather. Bob describes himself as a "loner who needs people." So he would stand on the corner, just waiting for a chance to strike up a conversation.
It didn't take long. People would ask him how he was. and he would snap "terrible!" every time, and complain about the agonies and infirmities of old age. After that, he would listen. Bob drew people to himself not because he was entertaining, but because he was willing to be entertained. He didn't laugh unless he thought it was funny, so people made an extra effort to amuse him. This cheered everyone up. Bob could spend a half hour on the corner and not say a word -- watching the conversation around him grow more and more animated. Mostly it was funny stories and tall tales. If it strayed into gossip, Bob kept silent. He never had an unkind word to say about anyone.
He would get up -- usually after noon -- and go to Samad Deli for his first meal -- freshly scrambled eggs and onions in a tinny aluminum container. "The guy made it for me once and I liked it, so since then I have it every day," he said. In good weather he would spend early afternoons in front of Citibank, dancing and grooving -- minimally but rhythmically -- to reggae music on the boombox of Fletcher, whose natty clothing stand is a fixture on the sidewalk. Bob wore a selection of colorful hats from Fletcher. In winter he would follow the sun across Broadway, first to the center mall, and then to the northeast corner by the drugstore. In hot weather he usually gravitated west, from Broadway to Riverside, to the little plaza of "the chairs," where he and his friends would stay until dark.
Who is Bob Miller? The following sketch is not a biography, but a collection of things he told me about himself over the last few years. I couldn't interview him in journalistic style -- he doesn't want to be interviewed, he just wants to talk with you.
Bob was born in Philadelphia in 1930 and grew up in the Jewish neighborhood known as "Strawberry Mansions." He was small and shy -- they called him Stumpy at Central High School. But he found something that saved his life. "Football saved my life!" Bob was a fullback -- small, but a power runner. I can picture him with his head down, both arms around the ball, exploding through the bigger guys on the opposing line. Football gave him a team, and something to throw himself into besides teenage angst.
Everyone was brilliant at Central High School, says Bob. "I graduated third from the bottom of my class, and I was a genius!" When he was fourteen a distant relative, a mobster known as "Chinky" Rothman, came to town incognito for a family event, and took a liking to Bob. Two weeks later Bob was pressed into service as a pallbearer at a Mafia funeral. His best time of year was summer, which he spent on Long Beach Isand, working as a milkman for his uncle's grocery store.
He got in and out of college somehow, but then his parents insisted he go to law school. He hated it, and his professor could tell. "You don't want to be a lawyer, do you?" But he put his head down and did it, and hated it. Then sometime in the 1960s, he discovered a new field that saved his life. "Computers saved my life!" Bob Miller could talk the language of computers, and teach it too. He taught computer science at City College and Columbia, and then became an IT wizard at Con Edison. In his late 80s he was still on call at Con Ed as a technological fixer.
Sometime in the 1960s, Bob went to a party in Harlem, and eventually asked where the bathroom was. The hostess told him he would have to go outside and pee in the parking lot. There was a sign on the bathroom door that said "Blacks Only." That cracked Bob up. He married a West Indian woman from the island of Grenada. They had two daughters, and according to Bob they never had any racial problems with anyone. "This is New York," he would say.
Bob loved Morningside Heights, New York, the USA and Western civilization. He was a one-man counterculture on the Upper West Side. One time a bunch of us were bemoaning the evils of Western Civilization, and he burst out: "What is wrong with Western Civilization? Western Civilization is the greatest thing that ever happened to the world!" Bob was drafted into the US Navy in the mid-1950s, the height of the Cold War. He still wears a cap embroidered with the insignia of the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea. They were in the Mediterranean in 1956, during the Suez conflict between Britain, France, Israel and Egypt. "There was a war, but we weren't in it," he says.
Western civilization built Bob Miller. Today he is stranded with a bunch of superannuated midwesterners in a fancy Florida senior complex. He says it's a "waste of life," but he's going to stay. The food is good, the concerts are good, the physical therapy is helpful, And he can always work on his book, tentatively titled "Building Success through Low Self-Esteem." The trick is to need other people, and let them know you need them. Making other people feel good about themselves can make you feel better, too.
Who knew? Thank you, Bob, from all your needy friends.
-- Photo and Video by Tom Phillips
--- Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips and H. Robert Miller
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