Oral History Interview with Laura Miller, October 30, 2014 Page: 4 of 25
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York Times crossword puzzles now, it always takes me back to my careful penmanship
when I was in third grade. So I think it was a combination of liking actual physical
writing and then loving to read. I was always in the summer book programs in West
Concord in our little library, and I read the most books and got the gold star on the wall
and that kind of thing. I just liked making up stories.
Chase: So journalism was a natural fit, then?
Laura: It was. I mean, I knew the day that I walked into high school that I was going to
be a journalist. That's why I did the lit review, edited that. My boyfriend at the time
ended up going to RISD - the Rhode Island School of Design -- for penmanship, drawing
and illustration; he was the illustrator of the lit. review. He did the drawings on the cover
of the yearbook, so we were just like a big tag team for writing and illustration. And then,
typical, the principal shut down one issue of the newspaper, because of course he didn't
like what I was going to write in an editorial. We had teacher advisors, and I thought that
they were unfairly not letting something happen, you know, something enormous like not
letting us pick our prom band or something. It was something I was really mad about. So
I wrote this scathing editorial about the teacher advisors, and the principal called an
emergency meeting with the student council and the whole newspaper hierarchy, and we
all had to go to this meeting. They said I couldn't run the issue, and I said we are going to
run it anyway, and then he said then you're no longer a student at this high school and
I'm going to call your parents, and I'm like okay, okay. Uncle, uncle. (laughs)
Chase: So you gave?
Laura: Yeah, I gave.
Chase: Wow you were a muckraker before you even had the skills to be a journalist.
Laura: Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's pretty bad though when you're a muckraker without
the skills. (laughs) You get in all kinds of trouble. It's better to have the skills, but it took
a while to learn them. Anyway, I'm still in touch with...my favorite teacher of all time --
a high school business teacher named Mary Bankowski who taught me typing. She's still
alive and she lives in Ohio, and I'm still in touch with her. She knew I was a lunatic, and
she was a lunatic too; she called me "Pickles" because I formed my own club. I was
bored with all of the clubs, so I formed a club called "Students with a Purpose." (laughs)
Our purpose was to sell bagels and pickles -- pickles at lunch and bagels in the morning -
- and use the money to buy cleaning supplies to clean all of the water fountains in the
school.
Chase: I read about this, yeah. Your act to clean up the water fountains in your school.
Laura: Yeah, so it was a completely insane situation. And the kids loved being in the
group -- number one: we loved selling pickles and bagels, and we loved eating pickles
and bagels, which was good, and number two: we loved cleaning things up. So anyway,
she called me "Pickles". That was my nickname in high school. I think that's another
reason why I was most unpredictable in high school.
Chase: Yeah, this is just a weird situation. (laughs)
Laura: (laughs)
Chase: I mean, did it work? Did you get results?
Laura: Oh I thought it did. I mean the sinks were clean. (laughs) And kids were eating
these enormous pickles at lunchtime.
Chase: So you just didn't like any of the groups? So you were like, I'm going to make
my own?
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Carter, Chase & Miller, Laura. Oral History Interview with Laura Miller, October 30, 2014, text, October 30, 2014; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth586995/m1/4/?rotate=0: accessed June 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism.