Founding faculty member Dr. Jon Miller established a longstanding school tradition of reading Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” annually for the Science and Math community. Since his retirement in 2015 — and his death in 2017 at age 73 — Dean of Humanities Elizabeth Moose continues the tradition by reading,“’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” As this year’s reading approaches on Dec. 15, many alumni and colleagues remember Dr. Miller fondly. Melissa Brady ’02 was so struck by Dr. Miller’s wisdom and kindness while she was a student that she often wrote down quotations in her British literature class notebook. She now shares the following selection from that single notebook with the whole community, saying, “I hope we can remember his presence. His voice still echoes with me to this day. He is one of the many reasons NCSSM is so special.”

On education and learning

• “Take the great teachers, not the great courses.”
• “You can’t be the expert of a culture until you know the language.”
• “Intelligence is cheap — what makes it worthwhile is perspiration.”
• “Genius works with time.”
• “Our good times tend to be retrospective. The special thing with high school is you know you’re having a good time when you’re having it.”
• “Don’t live life passively. THINK!”
• “Measure yourself against the best.”
• “Class, let’s talk about more pleasant things. Let’s talk about Hamlet killing people.”
• “Shakespeare is more alive today than most people are alive today.”

On life and relationships

• “When we hurt somebody, we tend to want them by our side so everything will be okay.”
• “Love is always based on a certain kind of ignorance.”
• “The more we experience love, the more we realize it’s a real gamble.”
• “Don’t ever do lunch and dinner meetings — that’s the time for family and friends.”
• “Love is something that you give, not something that you get.”
• “Every day for a child is a good day.”
• “Children like whatever they get — that’s innocence.”
• “Each of us as we are faced with a new situation has a little bit of innocence.”
• “Innocence tells us all things can happen; experience teaches us not all things are possible.”

On character and a meaningful life

• “Sometimes you’ll never know if you did the right thing. Finally, there are some things you can’t ponder.”
• “Questions come out of our weaknesses; answers come out of our strengths.”
• “What you do are your values — it’s not what you think.”
• “Live every day with honor, and you’ll have nothing to be ashamed of.”
• “The real test is never the test. The real test is how you respond to the test.”
• “One of the measures of our life is the work we do.”
• “Sometimes people are the least human when they’re the most rational.”
• “It’s very hard to make amends to ourselves.”
• “Imagination has the power to change our lives, to save us.”
• “Beauty is something we possess; money is something we take out of our pockets at night.”
• “Reaching contentment is liking yourself.”
• “Discontentment sparks motivation.”
• “Fame is transient; it’s not as permanent as we used to think.”
• “We must half create what we have.”
• “Most of our golden moments are about 8 seconds.”
• “It is coming into contact with strange things that makes us grow in life.”
• “You should always buy commemorative stamps — it shows your care for detail.”
• “To all the important questions, we don’t have the answers. That’s life.”
• “Tragedy reminds us that the good is good enough to die for.”
• “We can laugh endlessly, but we can’t weep but for so long.”
• “We don’t know anything about death. The question is: how do we live?”

Brady took a break in her class notes to journal in March 2002 at age 17, “Dr. Miller makes me not want to leave Science and Math. His voice, his lessons, his wisdom — constantly reassuring. He always makes me feel good about life. The world would be a wonderful place if all its children had a little Dr. Miller to carry on in them.”

She reflected that “this note followed a quote of him saying, ‘Death becomes closer and closer as we go on – it becomes more personal,’” adding, “As it did for him — as it does for us all.”

Asked upon his retirement about his fame for reading “The Grinch” annually in Bryan Lobby, Miller said this: “The remarkable thing from my perspective is to see the students gathered; they look like they’re 17 going on 27 because, of course, everyone is dressed up. Then all of a sudden they are 17 going on 7, sitting on the floor listening to a story.”