Title: The Sad,Sad Case of the Miller Family... Source:
Community paper URL Source:http://thecommunitypaper.com/archive/05_04/index.html Published:May 4, 2011 Author:Lyle E. Davis Post Date:2011-05-04 17:47:50 by CZ82 Keywords:None Views:3520 Comments:3
t started out as just one of those sad things that happen in life. A nice elderly couple, poor as church mice, living on a small farm in East Orange, Vermont.
From all appearances, they were only barely able to survive. Alex Miller would even scrounge rusty nails from burned out buildings for use in repairing his roof. He drove a ratty old VW Beetle and when it died he found another even more ratty VW, and then another, both little more than VW carcasses rusting away but still, inexplicably, operational. The VW’s, both operational and dysfunctional, displayed their rusty selves upon the yard of this small farm.
In the year of 1993 Alex took leave of this earthly planet and went on the his Great Reward. In 1996, just three years later, his beloved Imogene decided she, too, would check out and meet up with Alex somewhere in that Great Heavenly Place.
Well, East Orange is a cozy, family type community. The local church took up a collection so both Alex and Imogene could be buried in the churchyards. The state, however, being a state, and comprised of flint-hearted government officials, laid claim to the farm and planned on selling the farm for taxes.
That would have been the end of a sad story, except . . .
While preparing the estate for auction, the sheriff discovered a cache of bearer bonds taped to the back of a mirror. That triggered a comprehensiv e search of the house and outbuildings. The estate auction would eventually be handled by Christies, and it would bring out collectors from all over the world.
It seems simple little poverty-strick Alex Miller was not all he appeared to be. He was, in fact, a Rutgers grad, son of a wealthy financier. He originally lived in Montclair, NJ, where he founded Miller's Flying Service in 1930. He operated a gyrocopter, one of those newfangled flying machines (similar to a helicopter, but different). As they grew out of their operational quarters and needed more room they moved from Montclair. To East Orange, Vermont.
Alex was a very private man. And he was paranoid about tax collectors. Didn’t like ‘em. Not one bit. So he decided to adopt a low profile life. He took his somewhat unusual collections with him. He had already converted his cash to gold and silver bars and coins, which he then buried in various locations around his farm. He carefully disassembled his gyrocopter, and stored it in an old one-room schoolhouse on his property.
Ol’ Alex, he was right handy with tools and wound up building a couple of dozen sheds and barns out of scrap lumber and recycled nails. In the sheds he put his collection.
You see, Alex Miller had an obsession with cars. Not just any cars, but Stutz cars. Blackhawks, Bearcats, Superbearcats, DV16's and 32's. He had been buying them since the 1920's. When Stutz went out of business, he bought a huge pile of spare parts, which was also carefully stored away in his sheds.
Occasionally, he would wander away from the Stutz cars and wind up buying items like Locomobiles, a Stanley, and a Springfield Rolls Royce. He never drove them.
He'd simply move them into his storage sheds in the middle of the night,.....
Continued at link with many photos
It helps if you post some of the info on the link.
