DISTINGHISHED SERVICE—Paula Garland, second from left, receives a certificate for distinguished service from Women’s League National Consultant Margie Miller. Garland, 92, was introduced by two women who have considered her a mentor over the years—Esther Menashe of Portland, left, and Debbie Greene, of Richland, Wash., right.
Women’s League inspired by 9/11 speaker
By Deborah Moon
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Margie Miller had two qualifications for her current job as a grief counselor at a Long Island family center for families of those who died on 9/11—her husband Joel Miller died on impact when Flight 11 hit Tower One and she had done programming for Women’s League of Conservative Judaism, so she transferred those skills to programming for families of 9/11 victims.
Delivering the keynote address at the Women’s League regional conference held in Portland May 4-6, Miller spoke on both those topics. Miller sits on the WLCJ International Board of Directors and is the lead trainer for WLCJ Leadership Institutes. She was the national consultant to the Portland conference, the first to combine the former Pacific Northwest and Northern California Regions into one North by Northwest Region.
“First I’ll inspire you before I totally depress you,” said Miller at the May 4 banquet.
She described the merging of regions as “a place of uncertainty” where “vision and optimism are forming a new community.” She urged the leaders at the conference to offer programs to reach every one of their members and to assess why some women choose not to join Women’s League.
“Do not dwell on challenges, dwell in possibility,” she said.
Miller has used that same approach to coping with the aftermath of 9/11.
“Here I stand weakened by experience,” she said. “Yet, I have found strength. I can be changed by what happened to me; I refuse to be reduced by it.”
She called 9/11 a defining moment in the nation’s history and a day when patriotism became fashionable again for the first time since the unrest of the 1960s.
The day when nearly 3,000 were murdered at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania offered lessons for a nation, she said.
“Hold true to things that really matter to you,” Miller said. “Do not live in fear, enjoy life. Become the best you, you can be.”
Miller, who holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology from Hofstra University, said she got her job at the 9/11 family center on Long Island because of the programming she had done for Women’s League. The center offers support for 20 different groups each week, free counseling and a variety of other programs for families of 9/11 victims. In June, the federal funding that has supported the free center ends, and so does Miller’s job.
Miller said the memorial being created at Ground Zero is important to her and other victims’ families because that is the final resting place of most victims. She said the one-inch piece of her husband that was identified after a year and half and which she buried does not seem to be his essence—“to me Ground Zero is where he’s buried.”
She said no remains have been identified for 42 percent of the victims. The 10,000 unidentified body parts will be entombed at the museum at the memorial, she said.