Chuck Miller

For Family and Country

Chuck is firm on his principles. The greatest asset you can have is family. You can’t buy it and it’s not for sale. Chuck holds his dearly close.

His Jewish grandparents fled pogroms in Poland around the turn of the century. The original family name “Malnick” somewhere along the way became “Miller.” They settled in Oakland, California and started a linen company. Many relatives followed, creating a tight-knit extended family that wrapped itself around young Chuck and his three siblings. But many didn’t make it out of Poland in time. Those who made it were fiercely devoted to the American project.

When Chuck was a slick young law student at UC Berkley, he sat his grandfather down and listed all the clever ways to lower the family’s tax bill. His usually taciturn grandfather responded: “Why wouldn’t I want to pay taxes to the federal government?!” This country gave him everything—safety, freedom, prosperity, and the American Dream—and fought Nazi Germany. He would happily pay his fair share to Uncle Sam. Chuck was moved. From then on, he carried a deep loyalty and affection for American justice and rule of law that has influenced all corners of his life.

In the late 1950s, he made his way to DC to be a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. A year later he was offered a job at Covington & Burling LLP. It was supposed to be temporary before he could head back West. He fell in love with his boss’s secretary. She was also from out West (Idaho), and she too came from a strong family she missed. When he was offered Partner at Covington, they decided to settle in DC. He would eventually run the firm as Chairman from 1991-95. But Chuck and his wife remained attached to Idaho, summering every year in Sun Valley, a tradition that’s survived multiple generations of Millers to this day.

He watched DC turn from a sleepy government town to a cosmopolitan city with a fancy new Metro system and a new Dulles International Airport. From the 1970s on, the ballooning federal regulatory regime kept lawyers like him busy. He developed an expertise in airline and railroad mergers. By the 1990s, he increasingly focused on social service programs, helping state governments adjust to Clinton-era Medicaid and welfare reforms. Then-DC mayor Marion Barry turned to Chuck as well to figure out how DC could comply with the new TANF cash assistance program.

A self-described public school fanatic, protecting DC public schools was one of his first forays into local DC civic life. His kids’ local neighborhood school near National Cathedral, along with several others in the area, was set to be closed. He and others led a drive to combine the affected schools into a single complex, which led to ramped up enrollment, and saved the elementary and middle schools. Today the schools are bursting at the seams. He would later lead a committee that proposed creating a magnet public high school, and soon after Banneker came to be.

Before and during the Control Board era, he was involved in what was called the “DC Agenda.” City leadership turned to a group of experts like Chuck for advice on how the city should build-out after the Home Rule Act on matters of governance enrollment and judicial reform.

Chuck did what he could to fight for DC rights in Congress too. In 1998, he led a team that filed a lawsuit declaring that DC citizens had a constitutional right to have voting representatives in Congress. There were dozens of plaintiffs who testified, just ordinary DC voters and citizens. They lost the case, and the Supreme Court declined to review it, but it caused a lot of noise and attention.

He stopped practicing law at age 80 in 2015, but he isn’t one for slowing down. He still takes on pro bono projects and serves as General Counsel for FC2. He wrote a history of Covington that ended up filling 600 pages. He enjoyed it so much, he wrote two more, on his forebears, one each for his mother’s and father’s side. They tell stories of struggle, immigration, and how families grow and stick together.

The Millers have indeed made storytelling—and celebrating family—a craft. It began with his parents’ 40th anniversary. He and his siblings pulled together a “LIFE” magazine edition about their parents’ lives. Then for their 60th anniversary, the first of many Miller family gag-filled, mystery-themed feature films was made. It’s become a biennial project. The kids are the main characters, and the adults are the villains. Everyone plays a part. Chuck is a writer, producer and director, and he always makes a Hitchcock-style brief cameo appearance.

The most recent Miller masterpiece is called The Rainbow Seekers. The detective kids are told there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the country of You-betcha-stan. Their journey takes them to false pirate booty, Judy Garland singing about rainbows, and rumored rainbows in Hawaii. What’s really at the end of the rainbow? Chicken soup served up at Parkway Deli in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Chuck is hard at work scripting out the next movie caper. He hopes all these movies will teach following generations to cherish family. It’s a legacy he intends to leave for his grandkids and great-grand kids, just like his grandparents did for him. ■