By Jennifer Meeropol, RFC Executive Director
Last summer the RFC lost a founding member of the Board and a dear friend when Bruce Miller died after a battle with cancer. Bruce served on the Board for more than 30 years, from 1990 until his death.
He was also a treasured family friend. I met Bruce, his wife Jane and their girls more than 40 years ago. I started babysitting for their daughters when they were three and six years old and I was 12 or 13. Our families vacationed together and often gathered to celebrate holidays and birthdays. When I described our relationship to friends, I often used the expressions “friends who are family” or “chosen family” and that’s absolutely who they were to me.
That relationship deepened when I started working at the Rosenberg Fund for Children in 2007 and I got to know Bruce as a wonderful, supportive Board member. He cared deeply about the families we worked with and, along with Jane, who served as the RFC’s bookkeeper for the first few decades, was always ready to do what was needed to help out. Hosting beneficiaries at his home before Gatherings, making endless trips to the airport to pick up folks and drop them off, helping staff major events–including one memorable occasion when poor Bruce was tasked with helping attendees at an event in NYC work a broken elevator. He was thoughtful, deeply committed to the organization and the people and always ready to do what was needed.
Bruce worked as a staff attorney for the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC) before moving to the east coast in 1980 to join the faculty at Western New England University School of Law in Springfield, Mass. In his 40-plus year career at WNEU Bruce taught Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Jurisprudence, and Civil Procedure while mentoring generations of students (including RFC Founder Robert Meeropol). Bruce's students, many of whom became lifelong friends, praised his acceptance of differing viewpoints, his unwavering commitment to social justice, his legal expertise and how generously he shared his time and knowledge.
In recognition of Bruce’s deep commitment and importance to the RFC, and in collaboration with Bruce’s family, the RFC Board decided to create a new fund at the RFC: The Bruce Miller Legacy Fund. Each granting period, the Board will identify several grants to activist parents whose efforts are focused on issues, communities or priorities that were especially meaningful to Bruce. The family will select one of these grants, which will be designated as the Bruce Miller Legacy Fund grant. The first of these awards, to an attorney who fought a successful multi year legal case for Indigenous people harmed by a multinational corporation, is highlighted in the granting article of this newsletter.
As I said in my remarks at his memorial service, “I can't begin to capture everything Bruce has meant to me over 40+ years of having him (and Jane and the girls) as such a big part of my life. I am extraordinarily lucky to have an amazing dad; having Bruce in my life as a friend, mentor and at times additional father figure whom I so admire and respect makes me ever luckier.” I hope this new named fund honors his legacy of service to the RFC and deep commitment to our grantees.