The Man Called ‘Greasy’ — Part 1

There are several theories concerning the origin of Cecil Miller’s nickname “Greasy.” Many of those notions are probably apocryphal.

Unfortunately for the memory of Miller, who died in 1951, the idea with the most traction may also be the most popular, the most convoluted and the most suspect. That idea came from the 1957 memoir “Go North, Young Man,” penned by Stariski Creek homesteader and Miller neighbor, Gordon Stoddard.

It’s apparent throughout his book that — although he had a begrudging respect for his fellow homesteader’s knowledge and abilities — Stoddard felt little warmth toward Miller. From the time in his book that he arrives on the southern Kenai Peninsula, he offered readers unflattering descriptions of Miller, comparing him to the bloodthirsty giant from the “Jack and the Beanstalk” story and referring to him as “the overlord of Stariski Creek.”

But it was probably the entire chapter dedicated to Miller — entitled “Greasy Grogan” — that cemented Miller’s reputation as messy and mean, and also brought to the forefront the notion of greasiness.

Stoddard described a pinochle session at Miller’s home, where the host served his card-playing guests homemade doughnuts created with an abundance of lard. Prior to the doughnuts, wrote Stoddard, he had wondered why his neighbor was nicknamed “Greasy,” but Miller’s nauseating treats prompted a greater understanding.

“The first doughnut I bit into was so full of grease that most of it dribbled down my chin and cascaded onto my shirt,” he said.

Although Stoddard, in his memoir, never called Cecil Miller by his proper name, the true identity of “Greasy Grogan” was laid bare in a later Stoddard interview in Ella Mae McGann’s local history, “The Pioneers of Happy Valley, 1944-1964.” In McGann’s book, the details Stoddard attributed to his former neighbor, whom he called “Greasy Miller,” matched the details he had provided in his own book for Greasy Grogan.

In the McGann interview, Stoddard failed to explain why he had changed Miller’s name for his memoir, but people who knew both Stoddard and Miller at the time have posited that Stoddard was attempting to avoid hurting the feelings of Miller’s friends and family. Miller himself had been dead for six years at the time Stoddard’s memoir was published.

That said, the nickname may have had origins. First, as Stoddard intimated and former neighbors have mentioned, Miller — during his time in Alaska, at least — was a messy housekeeper, failing in his last year or so of life to regularly wash his clothes, allowing the filth to build up.

Second, and perhaps most likely, the nickname may have come from the notion of the metaphoric “grease monkey” and have originated many years earlier, either when Miller was a member of the Seabees in the U.S. Navy or when he was a police officer in Ohio and was considered an expert mechanic.

Backstory

Cecil Hubert Miller was born March 16, 1895, in Dexter (near Eugene), Oregon, to parents Andrew Thomas Miller and Nellie Inez (Hunsaker) Miller. Andrew was a teamster for many years before becoming a farmer. Cecil was born in the middle of the pack of seven siblings (three brothers and four sisters), all of whom would outlive him.

After completing public school in Oregon, Miller tested a number of job markets and locations. He worked for a railroad and in a machine shop and a lumber camp. He spent time in Sacramento, California, and was later employed on ships plying the waters of the Great Lakes. He was nearly 6 feet tall, slender and strong, with brown eyes and light-colored hair.

He came to Akron, Ohio, in 1915, the year he turned 20. Many years later, he told a reporter from the Akron Beacon Journal that arriving and settling in Akron had been “more by accident than design.”

By motorcycle, Miller had been traveling and working around the country. While in the Midwest, he had decided to head for British Columbia. He didn’t get very far.

On the way, his motorcycle broke down near Akron, and the direction of his life changed. He stayed in Akron and spent the next eight years employed by B.F. Goodrich, starting in the company’s power house and later becoming a stationary engineer in its rubber works factory.

By 1933, Miller, still in Akron, was married, a father, a member of both the Moose Lodge and the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and a patrolman for the city police department.

In September 1918, the 23-year-old Miller had wed 16-year-old Ohio native Dorothy Hazel Henderson, who had needed written permission from her parents to marry so young. Almost exactly one year later, Cecil and Dorothy became parents for the first time. Over the next few years, they produced four more children for a total of four sons and one daughter.

When Cecil died, however, he was survived by only four of his children. His 5-year-old son Charles Raymond Miller, born in 1925, had been struck by an automobile while he was crossing a city street in 1931. He had emergency surgery in an Akron hospital the next day but died from his injuries (“traumatism by auto,” including a fractured skull, according to his death certificate).

After the United States entered World War II, 47-year-old Cecil Miller decided to join the fight. He enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserves on Sept. 3, 1942, becoming a boatswain’s mate, first class, as a member of the Seabees (a heterograph of the initials C.B., for Construction Battalions).

He was honorably discharged June 4, 1945, and, for the next three years, returned to his patrolman job. When he retired in 1948 from a nearly 25-year career on the police force, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to help finance his move to Alaska, leaving behind a city of about a quarter-million residents for the relative isolation of the southern Kenai, where a new highway was still in the process of being punched through from Soldotna to Homer.

Dorothy and their two youngest children — 20-year-old Evelyn and 16-year-old Tommy — joined Cecil for the trip north. They drove to Alaska, towing a small house trailer that Cecil had built. After settling briefly in Anchorage, they moved to the Kenai Peninsula.

On July 26, 1948, Cecil filed on a 155.75-acre homestead parcel on the south bank of lower Stariski Creek, north of Anchor Point. On the property, he parked his 2-ton, flat-bed truck with his trailer-style house built on it. Over the next three years, he built a two-story log cabin, got to know his neighbors, helped found the United Homesteaders’ Cooperative Association of Anchor Point, and hunted and fished and played plenty of pinochle while attempting to live the Alaskan dream.

But things didn’t turn out the way he’d planned. About a year and a half into their Alaskan retirement, Dorothy returned to Ohio. Their kids apparently moved back and forth between parents, and Cecil’s life, at age 56, was cut suddenly, sadly short.

On May 19, 1952, Dorothy Miller, accompanied by Evelyn, applied for a military plaque that could be placed on the grave of her husband, Cecil. The grave for the former Stariski Creek resident was located in Row Seven of Section One in the Anchor Point Cemetery.

On the back of the application card, Evelyn wrote the following assurance that the plaque would be properly installed: “There is no superintendent, sexton or caretaker (at the cemetery), so I, the daughter of the deceased, declare that there is no regulation regarding (grave) stones, and I will see that (the plaque) is placed.”

Dorothy, who never remarried, lived another 30 years, dying in a California convalescent hospital in 1982. Evelyn, the last of Dorothy and Cecil’s five children, died at age 94 in September 2022.

TO BE CONTINUED….