LEXINGTON, Mass. — Ralph Miller always loved an adventure.
From his early days growing up in Hanover, where he developed into a world-class skier, he sought excitement and experiences. His wife, Pam, said it’s a trait that defined his life.
“He was always trying something new,” Pam said. “Whether it was going off the Dartmouth ski jump when he was 10 years old, or flying with his father down in the banks of North Carolina and sitting on the beach. He got into hang gliding, and that became his absolute fascination. He was obsessed with it.”
Miller died on Nov. 21, 2021 after a battle with bone marrow cancer.
His sense of adventure is a large part of his legacy. The trait was ingrained in him through his father, Ralph Sr.
The elder Ralph Miller was an avid pilot, as well as a pathologist at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. In 1959, he flew with his colleague, Dr. Robert Quinn, to Berlin, N.H. to provide medical services to multiple patients.
Their return flight to Lebanon Airport never arrived, as the plane crashed in the Pemigewasset Wilderness. It spawned a months-long search party that revealed both men died in the aftermath of the crash. That traumatic experience shaped Ralph Jr., who took part in the search for his father.
But Ralph Sr.’s love for aviation rubbed off on his son.
“I think that flight was a huge source of inspiration to him,” said Ralph Jr.’s oldest son, Alex. “I think that (his sense of adventure) was a key part of his essence.”
Miller attended Dartmouth College in the 1950s and won two NCAA overall skiing championships. He also competed for the U.S. National Ski Team in the 1954 World Championships in Sweden and in the 1956 Winter Olympics in Italy.
He won several North American and U.S. championships during the ‘50s. While competing in Portillo, Chile in 1955, he set a world speed ski record by going 109 miles per hour, a record that stood for 15 years.
Miller later donated his record-breaking skis to the New England Ski Museum in Franconia, N.H. Museum executive director Jeff Leich said that Miller was a big part of the Dartmouth and U.S. ski racing scene in the 1950s.
“(If I went down the Dartmouth Skiway with regular equipment), it would be in the 20 to 30 mile an hour range, and you and I would probably find it hair-raising,” Leich said. “Wooden skis without a plastic base in the 1950s, the average skier might go 15 to 20 miles an hour. It’s quite a feat to consider going over 100 miles an hour on these things. He was quite a ski racer in his time.”
Miller stopped skiing competitively in 1957 to attend medical school at Dartmouth and Harvard. He met Pam Gundersen — also a Hanover native — in 1960, and they later married and moved to Lexington, Ky.
He studied to enter the medical research field, and worked at the University of Kentucky as an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology. But he bounced around several disciplines in medicine before taking a residency to start seeing patients.
It became clear to Pam that he’d found his niche in medicine. Pam said he was great with his patients, particularly at making them feel comfortable with him and finding out what was really wrong with them.
Meanwhile, Pam’s political career in Lexington grew, and she ascended to Mayor of the city in 1993. She served for 10 years.
Ralph was by her side the entire time. He had no problem letting Pam have the spotlight. His ego wasn’t bruised. He was always supportive of his wife’s decisions in office.
Both were frequently busy with work or other endeavors, but it never got in the way of their relationship.
“He was working, and I was doing my thing on the city council and then the mayor’s office. We did a lot of things together, but we also had independent lives in our work. And it worked very well,” Pam said. “We just had a very successful partnership.”
Pam recalled the time she had a hip replacement, and Ralph stepped in to help with door-to-door campaigning. She said he enjoyed door-knocking and talking to people.
It was a glaring example of Ralph being there for his partner and for his family. And that decade with Pam in office set an example for their oldest son, Alex, of what strong relationships look like.
“I don’t want to over overstate it but the support that he showed her really illustrated that their marriage was a two-way street, and I just think an example and a role model for any couple,” Alex said. “He had all these things which, in particular, pop culture reveres, he’s this athlete and Olympic skier. But that didn’t mean that his ego was about, ‘Now it’s time to have me talk about myself as an athlete when my wife is leading the city. He supported her enthusiastically. And I think he did it because he loved to do that.”
That was far from the only example Ralph set for Alex and his other children, Erik and Karen.
Many families take ski trips over the holidays. But very few children have former Olympic skiers teaching them how to ski. The family regularly visited Hanover, where both Ralph’s and Pam’s parents resided. Those trips included ski outings, and the family also traveled to places like Colorado for skiing. Alex followed in his father’s footsteps — to a degree — and skied at Dartmouth in the 1980s.
Ralph’s bond with his family extended beyond skiing to his adventurous side at large. He’d tell Pam about flying thousands of feet in the air and seeing birds in the sky. Pam was nervous about him doing it at first, but she later acquiesced and went up herself. Once she did that, she felt more at ease when her husband went up. Alex said he and his wife eventually tried to learn hang gliding as well.
He also enjoyed hiking and mountain climbing, which led to some big trips as he got older. Ralph and Alex climbed the Matterhorn and the Dom in Switzerland when Ralph was close to 70 years old.
“That was a really meaningful trip,” Alex said. “He and I climbed the Matterhorn, that was a 15 hour round trip. We were the only party, other than a guided party, to make it up the mountain and down that day, so that was pretty exciting. It goes back to that idea of performing at a very high level in the outdoors.”
It also harkens back to another large part of Ralph’s legacy: his commitment to his family.
Between his accomplishments in skiing, medicine, climbing, or other pursuits — like running the Boston Marathon in under three hours — Ralph Miller had plenty to reflect on. But for him, those achievements took a back seat to supporting his wife and raising his kids.
Alex recalled, as a child, asking his father what the greatest thing he’d ever done was. He expected Ralph to say it was racing in the Olympics. But he didn’t.
He said it was having a family and having children.
“I’d been spending all this time idealizing these activities he had done. And he, more or less came back, and said, ‘You. And your brother, and your sister, and your mother,’” Alex said. “That was big for me to learn.”
Seth Tow can be reached at sports@vnews.com.