Return to the Land

and growing. I applied for a fellowship in Cardiology and the American Heart Association granted the financial aid. I also received financial support from the military G.I. Bill for furthering my education. Another blessed event occurred on October 29, 1966 when Timothy Daniel was born. His birth completed our family. Tim became a delightful and humorous child. He appeared to inherit many jovial traits from his paternal grandfather, David Stafford Miller. He also has an outgoing personality like his maternal grandfather, Daniel Woodrow Bird. Having completed my third year of residency my beloved wife informed me she’d had enough of academia and a new dress would be a welcomed change. I was ready, or at least I thought I was, for the real world. I received an invitation to join the group at Lewis-Gale Clinic in Roanoke in the Department of Internal Medicine. We were returning to where I had interned. This proved to be the second best decision of my life because for the next twenty-five years I practiced my skills in medicine and cardiology. In the meantime I passed my specialty Board and became a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine. I thought I was ready for medicine but little did I know that each day brought new challenges as well as many problems. I saw things that I never witnessed in all my years of training. Maybe that is why it is called the “practice” of medicine because one never achieves the pinnacle of perfection that he aspires. It would take a volume to report the experiences I had in my medical practice but to sum it up, it was difficult but rewarding.

The Miller Clan (Photo taken at The Oaks in 1991) Left to right: David Stafford Miller, III and wife Lea Tenney Miller Timothy Daniel Miller and wife Michelle Calvert Miller Sara Miller Clark and husband Scott Hughes Clark, and David S. Miller, II and wife Janet Bird Miller

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