Madeline E. Miller, teacher, pioneering business executive, librarian, and feminist, has died at 77
She earned three master's degrees, was one of the first women to attend Harvard Business School, and urged kindergarten students to appreciate the educational journey on which they were embarking.
Madeline E. Miller, 77, of Philadelphia, an inspirational teacher, pioneering business executive, librarian, mentor, and lifelong feminist, died Thursday, Sept. 1, of West Nile encephalitis at Pennsylvania Hospital.
Motivated throughout her life by a precise moral compass and energetic nature, Ms. Miller used education, hard work, and compassion to answer her challenges. She worked in Philadelphia as a kindergarten teacher, in Boston and New York as a business executive, and at Harvard University as a librarian.
Wherever she was, she defended human rights and personal dignity. “She had a bedrock belief in doing what was right,” her family said in an online tribute.
“She approached everything like it was a new adventure. She always followed her own star.”
She earned master’s degrees in library science, business administration, and early childhood education, and worked for a decade in Philadelphia as a kindergarten teacher at Harrity Elementary School and St. Peter’s School. An avid reader and frequent visitor to the Free Library of Philadelphia, she relished teaching her young students how to dive into books and took seriously her role in introducing them to the wonders and advantages of education.
Her family called her work with children “the job of her heart” and said, “Her classroom was filled with butterflies, bunnies, and many hugs.”
Ms. Miller worked as a librarian at Harvard’s Widener Library in the 1960s and as a senior business executive at Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Co. in Boston and Merrill Lynch in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Among the first women to attend Harvard Business School, she earned her master’s degree in business administration in 1970 and later won a leadership award at Boston Safe Deposit & Trust and served as an influential mentor to colleagues and other women for two decades.
She became active with the National Organization for Women in the 1960s, managed her local chapter in Massachusetts, and supported the Equal Rights Amendment and other progressive initiatives regarding reproductive rights, education, the environment, and other issues. She also was active with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America in Philadelphia.
“She had a very strong sense of justice,” said her daughter, also named Madeline Eliot Miller.
Ms. Miller moved to Philadelphia in 1992 at the suggestion of friends and was captivated by the city’s people, history, and neighborhoods. She lived in Society Hill, volunteered at libraries, schools, and soup kitchens, and became a template for community activism.
She swept the streets around her home, enlisted others to help her weed nearby neglected gardens — she called it the Weed Patrol — and voluntarily cleaned local public restrooms. She served on boards of the Society Hill Civic Association, Shipley School, and St Peter’s School; was president of the board at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, now Randolph College, in Virginia, the school at which she earned a bachelor’s degree in English; and served as board member for Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Virginia.
“She always told us you have to leave everything better than you found it,” her daughter said.
Born Sept. 29, 1944, in Norfolk, Va., Ms. Miller, in addition to business administration, earned master’s degrees in library science at Simmons College, now Simmons University, in Boston, and early childhood education at Bank Street College of Education in New York.
After a divorce, she married Harold Gordon Leggett at the Mütter Museum in the early 2000s. “She was a great woman, great in every way. In her mind, in her heart, in her spirit,” her husband said. “She made the world a better place.”
A single mother for much of her life, Ms. Miller helped her daughter navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood nearly seamlessly. She moved her into new college dormitories and apartments, drove moving trucks from city to city, and showed her that the journey they were exploring was as important as the destination they sought.
“She approached everything like it was a new adventure,” her daughter said. “She always followed her own star.”
Polite, self-deprecating, and empathetic, Ms. Miller made friends everywhere. She had an unforgettable laugh, liked to attend the theater and orchestra, grow daffodils and ferns, and pick blackberries in the fields. She read poetry; cared for cats, chinchillas, and hermit crabs; and taught her daughter and granddaughters to “love bugs, dirt, flowers, books, and themselves.”
Her favorite song was Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge Song.” Her granddaughters, Vera and Freya, said: “She gave the best hugs” and “She had such a good laugh.”
In addition to her daughter, granddaughters, and husband, Ms. Miller is survived by a sister, former husband, and other relatives.
A celebration of her life is to be held later.
Donations in her name may be made to the Free Library of Philadelphia, P.O. Box 7512, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101.