Involved citizen, accomplished mental health professional, man of many interests
Morton Miller. (Courtesy photo)
Dr. Morton G. Miller, a Harvard resident for 28 years, died April 11, 2018, at North Hill in Needham after a long illness. He was 83 years old.
Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from Olney High School, winning a Mayor’s Scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in history, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated with honors. He earned his medical degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1960 and subsequently interned at the U.S Public Health Service Hospital in San Francisco.
Selected for the Mental Health Career Development Program, he completed a residency in psychiatry at Yale University, after which he worked with National Institute of Mental Health Chief Dr. Stanley Yolles in Washington, D.C., and Bethesda, Maryland, first as special assistant and then as director of the Division of Special Mental Health Programs, which included drug and alcohol abuse, suicide prevention, child mental health, and aging. In this capacity, he testified before Congress and lobbied for legislation. Dr. Miller also spent two years at the Maudsley Hospital in London doing psychiatric research. In 1972 he moved to the medical school of State University at Stony Brook, New York, where he was responsible for residency training and chief of outpatient services. There, he specialized in the care of patients with major mental illness and became professor of clinical psychiatry. He also published a number of clinical and policy papers. In 1985 he was invited to head the Department of Psychiatry at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington. He expanded it into one of the busiest ambulatory services at Lahey. He retired in 2000 but continued to work as a consultant.
As chairman of Harvard’s Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, Dr. Miller was instrumental in the construction of more than 40 units of affordable housing. He also served on the Library Building Committee, playing a significant role in developing the new public library.
A devoted husband, father, and grandfather, he cared kindly for the snakes, gerbils, chameleons, cats, rabbits, chickens, and dogs brought home by his wife and three children. He was an enthusiastic cyclist, birder, cook, and traveler. He loved chamber music, was known for his aphorisms, and spent many happy hours reading and enjoying the view from the family house in Wellfleet, where he tended a thriving vegetable garden.
He leaves his wife, Ruth, to whom he was married for 61 years, and his three children: Jonathan of Okinawa, Japan, Jessica of Needham, and Joanna of Norwood; and two granddaughters.
Memorial services will be private. Donations in his memory may be made to to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (www.einstein.yu.edu/donors/donate/).
