Miller’s Memories

One 93-year-old resident’s memories of UA run deep

When Esther Miller thinks about her childhood in Upper Arlington, she’s reminded of riding in horse-drawn sleighs, dancing in the park on warm summer evenings and lifeguarding in Upper Arlington and Grandview

Esther, 93, has roots that run deep in the community. She grew up across from Miller Park – which was named after her family –in one of the first homes in Upper Arlington. Her grandfather, James T. Miller, was Upper Arlington’s first mayor and sold the first 840 acres of Upper Arlington land to developers Ben and King Thompson in 1913 — five years before she was born.

Just as her ancestors are part of the fabric of the Upper Arlington community, Esther has come to embody all that is the city.

Today, she is a vibrant and active senior who attends almost every city event, including council meetings and the Chamber’s recent Taste of UA.

“Esther fully engages in life with her mind, body and spirit,” says Sally Gard, administrator at the Upper Arlington Senior Center. “She’s a great role model and inspires us all.”

Esther visits the senior center twice a week, attending a class on Shakespeare and another on history, a subject she is particularly passionate about because it “keeps repeating itself,” she says.

Her recent activities have included a visit to the Ohio State Fair, complete with a trip on the Sky Ride, horseback riding in Michigan and traveling to historic sites around Ohio.

One of Esther’s favorite pastimes is photographing old barns and bridges. She also is a student of art, opera and languages, having studied Latin, French, Russian, Japanese and German. She doesn’t have patience for cards or television. She drives, cuts her own grass and rakes her own leaves.

Though she is well traveled, Esther has never lived away from Upper Arlington for an extended period of time. She has seen it grow from a village into a bustling city.

In 1920, when she was 3, the population of the village was 620, which she says was small enough to know most families and their dogs. During her 93 years in the community, Esther has been witness to its steady population growth: 3,000 in 1939; 9,000 in the 1950s; and 34,000 today. Upper Arlington gained city status in 1941.

Miller Park was like her back yard during her Norman Rockwell-like childhood.

“Anybody who was around joined in,” she says, noting one of her favorite games was a crazy free-for-all that involved modified polo mallets and a ball. “There used to be a horse club up near Henderson Road called River Ridge Riding Club. … We’d collect the broken polo mallets and then stick croquet mallet heads on them. There were no rules other than to hit the ball.”

During the Depression, the Miller children would make their own toys, and Esther remembers building a bicycle and other things from the items she found in the junk heap at Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive.

“We would find all kinds of wonderful things to use like toilet lids and faucets,” she says.

Dances with live music were held in Miller Park on summer evenings. Telephone poles were set up and electric lights were strung on them and covered with Japanese lanterns; the dance floor was created using platforms from Camp Willis – a temporary training camp –left behind by the National Guard in 1916.

The Mallway on Arlington Avenue was the hub of community activity in Esther’s youth. Bowron’s, Harrington’s and Kunkler’s were drugstores popular for their soda fountains.

In 1930, the first municipal services building opened across from the Mallway (now fire station No. 71), and housed both the police and fire stations.

“The police drove motorcycles with sidecars,“ Esther remembers. “I can remember my mother getting rides around town in the sidecar.”

After World War II, the city steadily developed north of Lane Avenue as more land was annexed. With that growth came schools, libraries and modern shop- ping centers and restaurants, including longtime favorite Chef-O-Nette, which Esther remembers opening in 1955.

Esther never married and worked in Columbus as a commercial artist. After she graduated from Jones, “the big school” that at the time served as Upper Arlington High School, she received her degree in fine arts from The Ohio State University. She then attended art school in Cincinnati, where she really came into her own, having been painfully shy as a child.

Nowadays, Esther loves interacting with people, and one thing she likes to do is randomly wish strangers a happy birthday.

“People will look at me and say, ‘But it’s not my birthday!’ I’ll just answer, well, happy birthday whenever it is. Just enjoy it,” she says. “I do it because it brings a smile to their faces. … I never will be an old lady.”

Melanie Circle Brown is a contributing writer. Comments and feedback welcome at gmartineau@pubgroupltd.com.

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