Janie Miller

Mary Jane Miller, born on January 30, 1933, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, passed away peacefully in Citrus Heights surrounded by her family on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 2024. Hers was a life centered around the family and community that she built with her bountiful energy, curiosity and loyalty.

She was born in and spent her early life in Pittsburgh where she met and married her husband of 65 years, Walter Francis Miller. They had children - lots of children; Kathy, Walter, Louise, John, Mary, Gloria, Dennis, Matthew, Maureen, Scott and Michael. In 1968, the family moved to Concord California and then on to Sacramento in 1976, expanding all the way with spouses and grandchildren. How big? Upon her death, she had 68 total between kids, in-laws, grandkids, and great grandkids. All are surviving except her husband Walter, her son John, son-in-law Don Brown and grandson Mark Schneider. Life will go on and we can count on this family to keep expanding in her honor.

Her love for moving was evident as she lived in copious locations, including Swissvale and the North Hills in Pennsylvania, and Concord, Fair Oaks, Gold River, Folsom, Cameron Park, Monterey, Roseville, Lincoln, Carmichael and Citrus Heights in California. Everywhere she went, Janie was building community as a devoted neighbor and volunteer teaching CCD, supporting schools, and working with AIDS patients through hospice care during the 1980s and 1990s. For the last month she had been living in a senior apartment where she busily charted and memorized the names of her neighbors using her yellow notepad. She taught us all about how to build a community -- you're always hosting.

Janie had an insatiable curiosity that she fed by making new friends, taking classes at the community colleges and especially through reading. When her husband passed in 2016, her daughter Mary took over the duty of driving her to the library every Tuesday. Mom required stacks of books; biography, psychology, religion, history, literature, medicine, philosophy... If someone bought her a book, she read it, gave her verbal book report on it and then promptly passed it on to someone else. Knowledge was not to be hoarded but to be shared. She passed away with two half-read library books on her table.

If you knew Janie Miller, this will all sound familiar. She was a woman who made her days count. She was loved and will be missed by all who had the opportunity to know her.



A celebration of her life is planned for 12 noon on Sunday December 22nd at the Citrus Heights Community Center at 6300 Fountain Square Drive Citrus Heights CA 95621.