ASHLAND — Jack Miller’s name may not resonate with too many in the Ashland area.

But there is a tie to this champion of education who turns 90 in October and who will be celebrated in his hometown of Williamsburg Friday night

Miller is the father of Ed Miller, the manager for the Merrill Lynch office in Ashland. That’s not the only local tie either.

Ed Miller read the recent column about the 1940 State Tournament basketball program that Ashland resident David Hicks and his wife found while going through her father’s old keepsakes. Her father played for Inez, one of the teams in the Sweet Sixteen that season.

The program struck a chord for Ed Miller because his father played in that Sweet Sixteen for Williamsburg, the team the Tomcats eliminated in the semifinals before falling to Hazel Green in the championship game.

His father had a plaque he had earned at the State Tournament that year recognizing him for being on the All-State Tournament team. But the Kentucky High School Athletic Association record books didn’t have him listed. They instead had Jim Sawyer, Jack Miller’s best friend, as the only Williamsburg player to make the team.

Ed Miller called me in search of ideas on how to find out more about the tournament since “Jack Mille Appreciation Day” was coming up Friday.

I advised Ed to visit the library and search through the Ashland Daily Independent microfilm for March, 1940. It was there, I told him, he would find the answer.

Miller did just that on Wednesday and he learned that his father was indeed named to the all-tournament team, which was then recognized as All-State. Two Tomcats, Charles Ebelen and Bob Hilton (the father of the future 1961 Tomcat of the same name), made the team as well along with four players from Inez’s third-place team.

Warren Cooper of Brooksville was another player who made that all-tournament team. Cooper lives in Morehead and his name is on the Rowan County High School gymnasium.

But for the past 70 years, Miller’s name has been omitted from the KHSAA records, probably just a clerical error, with Sawyer’s name there by mistake.

Ed Miller said his father never worried about it. “The people who really care know the truth,” he told his sons. “He said ‘Don’t do that to Jim. He’s my best friend.’’’

But Ed Miller thought it was time to set the record straight. He made a copy of the ADI article that actually came from the Associated Press listing the all-tournament team. The plan is to send it along to the KHSAA to make the correction, for the record, 70 years later.

Here’s a couple of interesting notes:

When Jack Miller’s Williamsburg team defeated Middlesboro in the regional finals in that 1940 season, his future wife Mildred was in the stands watching (although neither knew the other at the time).

When Williamsburg and Inez played in the consolation game that year, it was the first time the jump ball wasn’t used after each basket. Inez walloped Williamsburg 48-12. The following year the jump ball after each basket was taken away for good.

Jack Miller’s story doesn’t end there. He was invited by Adolph Rupp to try out for UK. The Baron asked Miller to attend Cumberland, which was then a junior college, for a year and then he could come to Kentucky and become a Wildcat.

While he was finishing at Cumberland, and all geared to attend UK, his National Guard Unit was called into military service for World War II. Miller went to serve and was wounded in the leg at Normandy. His son said his father asked that the leg not be amputated but it never healed quite right. He’s dressed and redressed the wound for 65 years. Miller is in a wheelchair today and goes regularly to the local VA in Mount Sterling.

But the war injury and nothing else would keep him from making an impact as an educator in Kentucky.

He coached football and basketball at Williamsburg for several years, even being named the state’s Coach of the Year in football in his second season despite never having played the game in his life. He was also successful in basketball but eventually became the superindendent of Williamsburg schools.

It was during his time there that he led the first integration in Kentucky, something that was smoother than he ever dreamed.

It came about because his wife, Mildred, was talking with their black maid one day and asked if her daughter was excited about school starting. The maid bristled and said she wasn’t excited. Mildred didn’t understand and asked why. She told her that her daughter would have to go to school in Frankfort, a boarding school, because they weren’t welcome in the public school.

“My mother immediately went in, called my dad at school and read him the riot act,” Ed Miller said. “She said ‘You fix this right now.’ He called the school board members that day and that night they agreed to integrate.”

Williamsburg was on a hillside and the black community was below it. As the black students were coming up the hill, the white students came one by one to meet them. They took them to the school to register them and get them in the right classroom. “My father said he never had a day of trouble,” Ed said.

Later, Miller became superintendent at Mount Sterling schools and again faced a segregation issue. In Mount Sterling, there was a black school — Dubois — and everything was segregated. Dubois would get the hand-me-downs from Mount Sterling, from books to chalk. It was a different situation than in Williamsburg.

“My dad got them to improve it and made a gradual integration,” Ed said.

Because some of the black students didn’t have as strong an educational background, the plan was to bring them in over a number of years. But not everyone agreed with that plan. Ed Miller said the Dubois school was burned to the ground. “The thought was ‘If one goes, they all go,’’’ he said. “That was in 1963-64.”

Things did eventually settle although not nearly as easily as it did in Williamsburg.

Williamsburg has already honored Miller for athletic achievement by retiring his jersey in 2004 along with that of his brother, Bill, who played for North Carolina and later for the New York Knicks and Chicago Stagg. Two other Williamsburg alum who played in the NBA also had their jerseys retired.

Jack Miller should soon have his name on the list of the many other All-State Tournament selections in Sweet Sixteen history. Not that he really cared if it ever was corrected. He knew and his family knew. That’s all that was important to him.

“Dad is like a god in Williamsburg,” Ed Miller said. “This Friday I’m looking forward to telling him we got the record straight and here’s the proof.”

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.

com or (606) 326-2648.