- Date Of Birth: July 27, 1942
- Date Of Death: October 19, 2005
- State: Michigan
In Chicago on October 17, 2005 at 6:45 P.M Trisha Miller, 63, died peacefully, while resting in her Rush Street condominium after enjoying a delectable dinner with a few of her close friends.
Trisha was a devoted wife for 30 years to the late Ronald H. Miller and a true friend to many. For 20 years Trisha ran her own public relations company in Chicago with clients such as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and the State of Michigan Travel Bureau. Trisha and her husband Ron also owned the renowned Union Pier, Michigan restaurant, Miller’s Country House. A true fine dining establishment and celebrated watering hole for locals and Chicagoans alike that enjoyed the four seasons in what has been known as the Hamptons of the Midwest or more recently, Harbor Country. Her passing, as well as her husband Ron’s, will bring to a close to an era in Harbor Country that, unfortunately, will leave a void in many peoples lives.
A native upstate New Yorker, Trisha was a graduate of Syracuse University and pursued her Master’s studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications. Prior to opening her own agency, she served as a management consultant for a Philadelphia-based business development firm and was also the director of communications for the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. Trisha and Ron married in Viet Nam in 1972, settled in Chicago after covering the war as ABC TV news correspondents and then moved to Lakeside, Michigan to open a restaurant in a dilapidated old biker bar in Union Pier, MI. Neither one having any experience operating a restaurant, and off to a slow start, they resorted to giving free drinks to people who in turn became loyal patrons who were frequently over served.
She was born the first of five children on July 27, 1942 as Patricia Ann Flynn daughter to Mary McDermott and Henry Joseph Flynn (aka Hank), a vagabond who loved to sit on the beach in Mexico watching the girls walk by drinking vodka & sodas and telling wild stories to whoever would listen. At times he thought he was the famed writer Robert Louis Stevenson until someone told him Stevenson was Scottish, not Irish. Deflated, he moved to Costa Rica.
At the time of her death, Trisha was in Chicago to get yet another medical check up for some rare disease that everyone thought would lead to her protracted end. Having dodged another bullet, her fifth in as many years, she was determined to forge ahead relentlessly. However, she surprised everybody, herself included, by succumbing to heart failure, exiting quickly, painlessly and gracefully as in a final curtain call to join her beloved husband, Ron.
During her prolonged illnesses, her sisters Terry and Judy spent weeks on end at Trisha’s side in her lakefront home relishing the time they were spending together while imbibing in watered down California chardonnay as they watched the shimmering sunset on Lake Michigan.
Trisha is warmly remembered as a generous, resourceful, tolerant and intelligent woman, who was always ready to help and never judged others or their shortcomings. She always found time to eat at competitor’s restaurants (to secretly critique them) and send witty thank you notes to her friends; all the while working full-time at Miller’s, volunteering for the chamber of commerce, the Lubeznik Center for the Arts and donating considerable time to the community.
As a woman of Irish decent she was proud of her heritage and loved to entertain by having regular dinner parties at her lakefront home ’till the wee hours of the morning. The parties were always catered by her restaurant as Trisha, being Irish, just didn’t have the proclivity or aspiration to cook. However, she truly loved to serve her friends, who will dearly miss her and her perennial cheerful personality. She has now finished the race she ran so well.
Trisha is survived by her sisters, Terry Troxell and Judy Flynn Wright in Scottsdale AZ and her brother Brian Flynn, also in Scottsdale as well as her brother Henry Joseph Flynn Jr. in Costa Rica, and hundreds of friends throughout the area. Also surviving are four grandchildren, Madeline, Margaux, Peter and Andrew, and two stepsons, Peter S. Miller and Christopher R. Miller. Contributions to the Ronald H. Miller
