SAFE PLANNING

Edna H. Miller will be 105 years old on April 12 of this year, and the changes she has seen in her life-time could fill many books. Although she is now living in a nursing home, until three years ago she resided in her family home on Monkhouse Drive in a Shreveport neighborhood that has also withstood many cultural and demographic changes. Yet, as a stay-at-home mom, her life was fulfilled with her family, church and home. She kept chickens in her back yard and gardened until she was 96. The Miller’s house was on a few acres until I-20 construction took some of it, but Edna still raised her own vegetables and many beautiful flowers in her yard. Son, Gerald Miller, keeps the old home place mowed along with his brother, Danny. Though Mrs. Edna has been fighting skin cancer for years and mostly gets around via a wheelchair, Gerald says she is in pretty good health. “Some days her mind wanders back to other times and places,” he says. She’s outlived most of her friends and neighbors, but she still has a brother and sister living.

Born and raised in Stamps, Arkansas, Edna was the oldest of nine children. Her dad farmed and built furniture, cabinets and boats. As a young woman Edna got a job as a nanny to a baseball player from Many, Louisiana whose family eventually moved to New York City so he could play for the Yankees. Edna moved with the family, and it was there that she met her future husband, Herman Miller, who came to this country as a Merchant Marine from Hamburg, Germany. He jumped ship in New York City and told his children that he learned how to speak and read English from the comic strips. He eventually got his citizenship in 1948, but had some hard times finding work because of his accent and the hard feelings against Germans after the war.

After Gerald was born, the Millers moved back to Stamps to be near Edna’s family, and then eventually they relocated to Shreveport where he got a job at a dairy. There Herman and Edna raised their three children and attended Kelly Memorial Baptist Church until the church sold its building. Since then Edna has been a member of Western Hills Baptist Church. Although Edna never learned to drive a car and Gerald says she was a homebody who loved to cook for and serve her family and guests, when tragedy struck his family and left Gerald a widower with three very young children, his parents welcomed them into their home and did what they could to help out for several years until Gerald remarried.Herman passed away in 1971, and at that time he was working as a sign painter for the city of Shreveport.

Gerald says that when his mother went into the nursing home her sons were trying to spend down her assets as they believed they had to do. But when Gerald saw an ad for S.A.F.E. Planning, he called the office and went in and talked with Steve. Gerald says Steve came up with a plan to get his mom on Medicaid and to save some of her money too. “If it hadn’t been for S.A.F.E. Planning, we’d have lost everything,” explains Gerald. “Sharon Calhoun does most of the talking with me. She tells me what to do and what I need to send. Sharon has been great, and we are well-satisfied with the folks at S.A.F.E. I doubt if I’d been able to get Mom on Medicaid without them.”