Home » About » Newsletters » February 2001
"Remembering Irene Miller"
By Alessandra Soler
Editor/Public Education Director
Irene D. Miller, president of the ACLU of Florida's Pinellas Chapter, died January 6, 2001 at home surrounded by family and friends. She was 71.
A former high school counselor, Irene served on the Pinellas County ACLU board for more than ten years before being elected president in 1997. One of her main goals as president was to increase diversity among board and chapter members.
"I have tremendous intellectual and personal respect for her," said Pinellas Chapter Board Member Maria Vesperi. "She was very ethical and very thoughtful in dealing with the issues. She was a very good person."
Under her leadership, the Banned Books Marathon sponsored by ACLU's Pinellas County Chapter became one of the group's most successful annual events.
In the December 1999 Torch, former Pinellas Chapter board member Don Musselman authored a tribute to Irene, in which he said she "manifests a youthful manner the freshness of which might be interpreted by some as uncertainty."
"But be not deceived," he continued, "behind this gentle manner there lies a powerhouse, a dynamo driven by her dedication to bettering the human condition. That self-effacing demeanor brings about tangible results whatever the venue, be it on the lecture platform, a theater stage, a high school guidance office, or a church fellowship meeting. Irene Miller is a playright, dramatist and dedicated ACLU volunteer."
She was certainly all that and more. A writer and actor, Irene was the star of her own two-act play, Margaret Sanger -- A Play with One Actor, written in the mid-1990s, about birth control rights. She donated all proceeds from the show to women's rights organizations and charties, including the ACLU and NOW.
She was so passionate about protecting womens' reproductive rights that she signed on as a plaintiff in the ACLU-FL's Bayfront Medical Center case which challenged the operation of a public hospital under Catholic health-care directives that limited certain reproductive procedures.
Aside from her volunteer work with the ACLU, Irene was active in several other groups. She was a founding member of the Liberty Fife and Drum Corps and was a board member of the Association for the Separation of Church and State. For more than a decade she served on the board of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Seminole.
"She was a very much involved person who seemed to grasp the issues and not hesitate to take action," added Vesperi. "She was a quiet, real low-key, but very effective person."
