They survived the worst battles of World War II. And died of coronavirus.
He said nothing about it to his wife, not for 64 years of marriage. He folded up his Army uniform, with the medals still pinned to it, and put it in the basement, where his older boy would sometimes take it out to play soldiers.“That generation, they didn’t air their problems,” said his younger son, Michael Miller. “He would say, ‘It was not a good time. I’ve had better times.’ He would not embellish.
The conditions inside the 247-bed state-run home, where Miller had lived for five years, were so chaotic that his children cannot recount them without breaking down. With scarce protective gear and a shortage of staff, the facility’s administrators combined wards of infected and uninfected men, and the virus spread quickly through a fragile population.
The facility’s budget increased by 14% over the past five years, according to a spokesman for the state’s health department. Even so, there were persistent shortfalls in staffing, and the local unions complained that workers were frequently pressured to stay for unplanned double shifts. The facility’s previous superintendent stepped down in 2015, declaring that the home could not safely care for the population on the existing budget.
Fifteen thousand people lined the streets for that day’s parade, and the facility — built on a hill and illuminated with floodlights — became a source of great pride in this part of the state.There was Emilio DiPalma, a retired crane operator, who died of the coronavirus April 8. So the next time, DiPalma brought him a cup of water from the toilet. Goering drank it down and said, “Ah, gute wasser!”
“As far as his service, what he encountered in Europe, I really am at a loss, ma’am,” said his oldest son, James P. Miller. “Dad probably just didn’t want to talk about it. It was past.” They showed corpses lined up in front of the Nordhausen concentration camp. It showed other things. Boxcars. Ovens. Bones.
“We’re used to seeing death — we know what it looks like when it comes — but I was in shock. I was just like, ‘Oh my god,’” he said.“What they had us doing, we were spreading it around,” he said.
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