Anne Hope Miller

.Anne Hope Miller, age 73, passed away on September 4, 2020, from complications of Parkinson’s disease, which she had battled for many years. She went peacefully in the medical wing of Tryon Estates, a community to which she and her husband had moved in late February. She had lived for almost eighteen years in Hendersonville prior to moving to Tryon Estates and was an active member of First United Methodist Church of Hendersonville. Anne was born on March fourth of 1947 in Muscatine, Iowa, the third of three daughters of Henry and Anna Morrow Hope, but she lived there only two years before her family moved to Humboldt, Iowa, where her father became general manager of the electric plant which he designed. Anne always contended that her birthday was the only day of the year which was a command and that she tried to live up to that command all her life. Anne spent all of her grade and high school years in Humboldt, where she was an excellent student. She decided in 7th grade that she wanted to have a Ph. D. in Mathematics and be a professor, and in support of that goal, was selected by the National Science Foundation to attend, in the summer before her senior year in high school, a special summer science and math program at Luther College, which brought her in contact with many other students with her interests . This experience made her even more determined to follow her dream. She subsequently attended Cornell College, in Mount Vernon, Iowa, where she, as would be expected, majored in mathematics and received a B.A.in Math in 1969. One of the highlights of her college time was her participation in a student exchange program that Cornell, which is Methodist affiliated college, had with a black Methodist college in Mississippi named Rust College. She was the first white woman from Cornell to ever participate in the program, and, for the fall semester of 1968 when she attended Rust, she was the only white student on campus. This was in the era of great civil rights turmoil in Mississippi, and she learned much about segregation, race relations, and the plight of the black community when she was there and was, subsequently, a strong civil rights advocate the remainder of her life. Anne entered graduate school at Northern Illinois University immediately after graduating from Cornell, having been given a graduate assistantship in the Mathematics Department, which was in the process of developing a Ph. D. program in Mathematics. Unfortunately, the program did not get the funding it required while she was there, but she did receive her master’s degree in Mathematics, and perhaps, more importantly, met and married her husband of 50 years, Don Miller. Her subsequent career involved her in an eclectic set of projects, including software design, antisubmarine warfare analysis, environmental impact analysis of pesticide programs, and satellite telecommunications, the latter of which was where she spent the last 20 years of her work-life. She retired in 2002 from Lockheed Martin, the last of two companies over the years which had bought the division of IBM she originally worked for when starting her telecommunications career. She lived in Colorado Springs at the time, but shortly after retiring, moved to Hendersonville. Anne was a Methodist all her life and most of that life, she was extremely active in the church and communities in which she lived, serving on and chairing various committees, while also working on community projects such as Interfaith Hospitality Network, Storehouse, Habitat for Humanity, NOMADS (a Methodist organization much like Habitat), and Henderson County Churches United. In each of the three large Methodist Churches she attended in Virginia, Colorado, and North Carolina, she was, for some period of time, the church’s representative to annual conference and in Colorado, served on two conference committees. One of the things she resented most about Parkinson’s Disease was her eventual inability to participate in church activities. Anne was a beautiful, kind, caring woman, who is greatly missed by all those who knew and loved her. She is survived by her husband, Don; her middle sister, Susan Harris; step-children, Derek Miller and Doni Lazenby; and step-grandchildren, Christopher Lazenby, Jonathan Lazenby, Devon Miller, Duncan Miller, and Emilie Miller.

A memorial service will be held at a future date as yet to be determined.

Sanders Funeral Home.

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