Lenoir-Rhyne University Athletics

Billy Eugene Miller, a member of the class of 1948, has enjoyed a longtime, successful career as an athlete, coach, administrator and business man.  A native of Hickory, Miller entered Lenoir-Rhyne in the fall of 1941 as an athlete recruited by former coach and L-R Hall of Famer Pat Shores.  Miller's L-R career was abruptly postponed, as were many athlete's careers at the time, by World War II.  Miller entered the United States Army Air Corps in 1942 and served as a pilot for some three years.  When Miller returned to L-R in 1946, he played on the first Bear grid team coached by Clarence Stasavich.  Football was not Miller's only sport, though and he also lettered in basketball and baseball, playing on a championship Bear baseball team in the process.  Following his graduation, Miller earned a masters degree from Appalachian State in 1950.  He then went to Hickory High School where he began a very successful stint as the men's basketball coach.  From 1950 to 1959, Miller's basketball squad won seven of nine conference titles and he was named athletic director at Hickory High in 1953.  Miller stepped away from his coaching and teaching careers in 1959 when he took the principal's job at Green Park Elementary School.  Following four years as a principal, Miller became assistant superintendent of the Hickory City Schools, a position he would hold a total of eight years.  Breaking up those years, from 1966 to 1974, Miller served as principal at Hickory High School.  Miller left the school system in 1979 to serve as distribution coordinator for Hamco, Inc., in Newton, N.C.  Active in the community, Miller was selected to be the first chairman of the Catawba County Council for the Arts and served as chairman of the Salvation Army Board.  Miller was also past president of the Hickory Rotary Club and a member of the Elbert Ivey Library Board.