National Clothesline
Last October, drycleaner Jeff Miller considered the option to run this year for
the 11th District House of Representatives slot in North Carolina, but his
initial (and arguably saner) decision was simply “no.”
“I had a lot of people calling me and asking me to do it, urging me to do it,” he recalled. “The Republican recruiters jumped in — the RNCC folks (Republican National Conservative Caucus). They’re used to running a traditional campaign and they were advising me to drop
everything I was doing.”
At the time, they were simply asking him to drop too much.
After all, he was still recovering from an economically brutal summer of hard
choices and cutbacks at his Hendersonville drycleaning plant, Miller’s Fine Drycleaning, and he was working long hours to help launch new regional hubs as part of the
Honor Flight Network (HFN).
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If that weren’t enough on his plate, his son, Beck, was also playing in the state’s high school soccer playoffs, so Jeff and his wife, Tamara, were traveling a
lot to show their support.
“In my mind, it was really a ‘no.’ I wasn’t hedging,” he said. “After they won the state championship and the flights were finished, we rested a
bit over the holidays. My wife and son came to me and said, ‘You know, we’re not telling you to do it, but we want you to rethink it.’”
This time out, he leaned toward a different inclination and at the start of
February he officially announced his intentions to run. He currently faces a
crowded Republican primary field which features five other candidates. Jeff
views himself as the least traditional choice.
“I’m no scholar. I’m no career politician. I’m not an attorney,” he noted. “I think I’ve got a wonderful moral compass and I do understand service. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past three years, it’s honor and service.”
After Jeff’s mother passed away in January of 2006, he sifted through his parents’ financial records and realized that they had donated a generous amount to the
building of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.
The project was a deeply profound one for both of his parents. Jeff’s father had served in the Navy during the war and his mother had lost a brother
who was a B-24 pilot.
Unfortunately, Jeff’s father had passed away before the memorial could be completed and his mother
was stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease and could not go once it was built.
“They never got to see it,” Jeff said. “It just really bothered me.”
He recalled reading about a private pilot named Earl Morse who arranged to fly a
handful of veterans at a time on various trips to DC. His program had started
in 2005 and was called Honor Flight.
Jeff thought it was a brilliant program but he believed it could succeed on a
larger scale so he started his own version and named it Honor Air. His goal was
to take as many veterans from Hendersonville as possible.
To accomplish such a feat, he would need to charter a jet for a weekend, which
would be an extremely expensive endeavor. Undaunted by the challenge, Jeff
worked on garnering a lot of publicity and was amazed at the response by his
fellow local citizens.
“It was an absolutely wonderful experience to have a community with 98,000 people
ante up $130,000 in 12 weeks while there were probably five other capital
campaigns going on in the county. It was impressive,” he said.
The success of that initial Honor Air campaign wasn’t enough for Jeff. He continued to arrange trips and by February of 2007, he and
Morse combined resources to create the Honor Flight Network.
By September of that same year, Jeff’s efforts helped ensure that Hendersonville, NC, and Hendersonville County, NC,
became the first city and county in the country to send 100 percent of its
World War II veterans to their memorials in DC.
To date, just under 36,000 war veterans from all over have now made similar
journeys with HFN. The organization now generates publicity with PSAs from
spokespeople such as Clint Eastwood and Trace Adkins.
“We didn’t see it on this kind of scale,” Jeff admitted. “But, we did think that it would pick up and catch on, so as we did it we created
a manual along they way.”
That manual has paved the way for significant expansion. Nowadays, HFN features
92 active hubs in 35 states. Its national exposure has been incredible and Jeff has had the good fortune to meet many
famous individuals. He and his family got to shake hands
and speak with President George W. Bush in the White House in December, 2008,
when he and Earl Morse each received a Presidential Citizens Medal for
performing exemplary deeds of service for the nation. It is the second highest
civilian honor in America.
Serving others just comes naturally to Jeff, who has been at the helm of his
family’s drycleaning business since the early 1980s.
Miller’s Fine Drycleaners was originally started by Jeff’s grandfather in 1915, then handed down to his father who took over full-time
after his stint with the Navy in World War II.
Jeff grew up around the plant and learned firsthand from his parents the
importance of serving others.
“My mom and dad were always looking for some way to help somebody,” he recalled. “I think that was kind of the way that generation was... they always took care of
each other. It was just a model that I think we all should live by.”
Certainly, the Miller family has always tried to reflect those beliefs in the
family business.
About five years ago, the company passed a rigorous set of cleaning evaluations
to achieve the Award of Excellence through DLI. The plant has also been
bestowed with an Amazing Customer Service Award from First Citizens Bank.
Despite an excellent track record for customer service, Miller’s Cleaners has not been immune to the recent recession. Jeff trimmed his own
income from the business to cut down on costs. It wasn’t enough.
Next, he gathered his employees together for a meeting. When given the choice,
they preferred scaling back on hours to avoid letting some people go. To
survive, the company had to tighten its belt wherever possible.
“We just started paying attention to good basic stuff,” he said. “We circled the wagons here. Fortunately, I’m blessed with the best group of employees I’ve ever had in my life and they understand what’s going on.”
Jeff wishes he could observe similar behavior from lawmakers in Washington, and
that will certainly be one of the issues in his campaign.
“A big deal to me is to stop the crazy spending and the debt,” he said. “There was a debt when the Obama Administration rolled it. It wasn’t under control and it’s getting worse. I can’t see the reasoning behind some of the decisions that are being made. I’m a very basic person. I think you keep things relatively simple as much as
possible.”
Jeff is the first to admit he’s never been groomed for public office. His slogan is “Common Sense For Congress.”
“Maybe I am just naive because I’ve never been in politics,” he said. “I know that it’s not always black and white, but it still seems like you’re going to know if it’s right or wrong for the biggest part. When you make a decision, you have an
obligation to explain it. I think that’s one of the things that I would do.”
Politically speaking, Jeff defines himself as a conservative who believes that
small business is the “heart and soul of this country.” He also strongly dislikes the divisiveness between political parties.
“I truly think if Washington would just take a deep breath, just sit in a room
together and find the things that they can come together on and leave the other
stuff on the sidelines for now, then things would start working together
better,” he said.
Ultimately, Jeff believes that if he is fortunate enough to survive the
primaries and beat the incumbent Heath Shuler (D-NC), his newfound position
will give him a better tool to help people. One way he hopes to do that is
through job creation.
“That’s the only thing that’s going to turn this thing around,” he emphasized. “People can’t spend money if they don’t have a job or they are worried about it.”
Though he just recently kicked off his campaign, Jeff is already noticing that
people are suddenly skeptical of his motives. Now if he tries to do something
to help the community, people think it’s politically charged.
Such is the case when he helped a young man named Cameron Sproles overcome
logistical difficulties in sending 700 care packages to troops in Iran and
Afghanistan. Regardless of the skepticism, the final results were rewarding and
Jeff doesn’t mind offering up his name if it lends credibility to a good cause.
“We all have an obligation, especially during this time in the country, to help
each other and not be afraid to do that,” he said.
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