John Stuart "Stu" Miller

Stu was born in Houston, Texas and lived in Colorado for over 50 years. He loved jazz, taking care of his things his own way, and most of all being a dad. Stu loved to fix things or rig up ways to make life easier for himself and others. He built shelving for the house and garage, dollies specifically for toting his string bass around and other detail oriented organizing hacks. He had a creative, inventive mind.
The middle child of three, he grew up all over Texas, (his words). He was raised by two English professors who practiced good grammar to a militant degree. Stu inherited some of that speaking correctness but also was a poetic speaker. He sometimes tried to make a point speaking in a metaphorical manner that only his wife and his daughter could understand (sometimes). He was also a writer of music and poems.
If you were to ask him what his happiest memory was, he would simply point at his daughter as if pressing an elevator button, wink, and then gesture holding a newborn baby on his forearm. If you wanted a story, he would tell it to you in painstaking detail and insert a rant about something dark and accidentally Kevorkian happening to Donald Trump before getting to the actual point. If you asked him for directions he'd go in his roundabout, measured way to first tell you something beautiful about the day, you, or life until you'd get frustrated and then he would too because you forgot to kiss- "keep it simple stupid." If you were to ask him what he was thinking, he might break out in song singing, "fajitaaaasss I once met a girl named fajitas." To the tune of West Side Story's Maria.
Stu had his hand in many jobs and hobbies. He was a handy man and master tinkerer till his last days saying that he wanted to take the hospital bed apart to fix it. And he did fix it with some help and curtailing the main goal. Only one rail was removed to the relief of his wife. He had many areas of expertise, like painting, cooking, gardening and bicycle repair. When younger, he enjoyed surfing with his brother and likely getting into mischief. He was a seafood chef on the Galveston coast also known as the Gulf of Mexico. He sold Studebakers in a baby blue three-piece suit with shorts and white knee-high socks. He made geodesic houses in the mountains. He was a reader of the Bible and practiced Buddhist meditation at one point in his life. He enjoyed the outdoors and loved the sound of wind in the aspen leaves.
Stu came from a lineage of classically trained musicians. His grandmother started the kids on violin when they were 5. The first jazz song he ever heard was "All Blues" by Miles Davis and he knew that his trajectory would be changed. His sister said that when he was 8, he just wouldn't leave the piano alone, so his parents got him a teacher. By the time he was 10, Stu was improvising and never looked back- he had jazz deep inside him. In the fall of '72 he moved to Denver Colorado and maintained his hobbies and different career paths and kept his hand in music. He played bass with a lot of bands, said the licks were too simple but enjoyed playing with Jimmy Buffet at Red Rocks. Stu played the upright bass at Shakespeare pool hall, the Merc with Joe Bonner and with a jazz philharmonic orchestra among many others. He was a gigging musician for decades before he decided that he didn't have the heart for gigging while the world was changing and moving away from live music. He was also a dedicated stay at home dad and those late nights made it hard for him to walk Emily to school with a cheery disposition. In his last weeks, his night nurse asked him what his favorite song was. He said, "I'd have to think on that, I have found a lot listening to JS Bach though." He was an all-around music man always listening for answers.
Later in life his love of bicycles flourished and while he loved riding them, he also relished repairing and rebuilding bikes from scratch and making friends with local bike shop owners. And he fixed other things that were discarded like vacuums and patio umbrellas. Stu loved to fix things.
Stu taught his daughter the art of resourcefulness and extended kindness and a helping hand to neighbors. He had a gruff manner at times, that belied his soft heart. He made cookies both for humans and neighborhood dogs around the holidays. He told and made-up dad jokes for laughs. He will be greatly missed and remembered.
We will celebrate his life with a small gathering in the park as he would have liked as he wasn't much for material things or big parties. Contact family for more details. Survived by wife, Melody, daughter, Emily, sister, Bea Sheperd, several nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grand nephews and dog, Gracie. Preceded in death by his father, Jon Miller, mother, Dollie Miller and brother, Robin Miller.
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