Bio: Miller, Albert - Family Loses Home to Fire (Dec 1976)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Miller, Oldham, Libby

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 12/23/1976

Albert Miller Family Lose Home Fire (21 December 1976)

Serious troubles which over the years have plagued the Albert R. (Pete) Miller family of the Town of Seif, descended on them again Tuesday morning.

As the family prepared for what could be their happiest Christmas ever, their house and all of its contents were destroyed by fire of unknown origin.

Mr. Miller, who has been critically injured and burned in a truck accident several years ago, was burned on the left hand and around his head as he successfully attempted to remove the family car from the garage where the fire apparently started.

The Millers were able to remove Donald, their 46-year-old son who have been confined to a wheelchair since a hunting accident 32 years ago. They threw a quilt over him to protect him from the flames and the sub-zero temperatures outside and rolled his wheelchair out the only door in the house which was wide enough to permit passage of the chair.

Donald had just returned from Marshfield, where after being hopelessly confined to a wheelchair, he had been making surprising and gratifying progress in using his legs once again.

“I don’t know how this will affect him,” Donald’s brother-in-law, Walter (Bunny) Oldham, commented. “I hope it won’t, but he’s pretty low right now.”

Only Donald’s eight-year-old poodle, a great favorite of the family, apparently was lost in the blaze.

Ironically, it was the poodle which had given the first alarm of the fire, at approximately 10 a.m. “The dog started to bark,” Mr. Miller said after he had been treated in Memorial Hospital, “and I looked out toward the garage and saw all this black smoke.”

Miller and his wife had been busily, and happily, decorating the Christmas tree, preparing for the Christmas day celebration just four days away.

“We got Donald out of the house, and then I went to see if I could get the car out,” Miller said.

Mrs. Miller telephoned the township fire department in Neillsville for help, saying only that their garage wad on fire. But by the time the fire department arrived at the Miller farm home, about 10 minutes later, most of the house also was in flames and the garage, attached to the house, had been reduced to ashes.

Paint on the hood of their automobile, severely blistered by the heat, gave mute testimony to the intensity of the fire, and the closeness of the call Miller had in removing the car from the garage. For a time, it formed the only protection from sub-zero temperatures for Donald and Mrs. Miller.

A neighbor, Orrin Libby, of Rt. 3, Neillsville, drove Miller to Memorial Hospital in his car, where he was given emergency attention and then was released.

Miller said he had no idea of the origin of the fire, except that it started in the garage.

“There was a small fire in the fireplace there,” he said, “and it may have started from that. It also could have started from electrical wiring: but I don’t know.”

No estimate of the loss was available.

A plea for donations to be left at the church was posted also.