Enid Miller, who moved to Sunnyvale more than 50 years ago during the Great Depression, passed away in her home July 14 at age 85.
Miller suffered the effects of diabetes for the past decade, said her son, Tex Miller, who lived with his mother for the last five years.
She never wanted to go to the Sunnyvale Senior Center near her home because she kept thinking she wasn't getting old, he said.
Born on Nov. 22, 1910, Enid Lasca Ford married Steve Raymond Miller in 1931, during the Depression. Her husband could not afford to buy her a wedding ring until after the family reached California.
Miller, her husband and their five children, refugees of the Dust Bowl, traveled from Oklahoma to Sunnyvale by train, Tex Miller said.
"We were all jammed in with soldiers lying in the aisles. It took four days to get to Los Angeles," he said. People kept trying to buy food from his father, but he wouldn't sell any because he had such a large family.
Miller always considered her children before herself. The family had little food in the days before their move, and her son said Miller always ate last.
"She went to work when her youngest child was only a year old. She wanted to stay home, but had to work because of the family. She always said you do what you have to do," he said.
First and foremost, Miller was a strong and caring mother. She raised eight children the best she could with little money, her son said.
"She never tried to turn away from what she had to do."
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, August 7, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.