Honoring Sally Miller

And her love for Lifespan

Her legal name may have been Sarah, but to all of us at Lifespan, she was Sally. In many ways, Sally was Lifespan. Her face was one of the most familiar in our organization. Her voice was the one you heard when you called the office. She was the extraordinary Lifespan volunteer. She would arrive every day at 7:00 and leave at 5. When we changed the hours to 4:00 at one point, and I was encouraging everyone to go home, she pointed to the clock to let me know it just wasn’t time to leave yet. If I wanted to be a sluggard, fine, but she would stay.

As Sally’s illness began to limit her physical abilities, it never stilled her heart. She was always there, always working to tell us what she thought, learned to use her boogie board, and, as one of our other volunteers said to me recently, she did more with less than anyone he ever met.

Sally was a Medical Escort Transportation (MET) program rider, and several of us she trusted took her to appointments. The photo on the right is part of our MET video day, where she wrote one word about what MET meant to her. The one on the right is her enjoying our St Pat’s day celebration at Lifespan Academy.

While her disease was relentless, it didn’t count on the veracity of Sally Miller. She lived twice as long as the expectations. But eventually the disease, and a bad fall, took it’s toll. We lost Sally last October. Over the last several months, we learned that Sally established a trust to be distributed upon her death to the organizations she loved. We are honored to announce that we are one of the recipients of a portion of that trust.

There never was, and never will be, anyone quite like Sarah Ann Miller.

We were partners with Sally. Thanks to her generosity we will partner with even more older adults.

We think Sally would be proud and she will be remembered and cherished every single day.