Faye Bryan (Bryan) Miller

Faye Miller was born January 18, 1935 in Castro County, Texas five miles southeast and one mile south of Dimmitt to Arthur Daniel and Mary Viola Adams Bryan. At that time, the family was living in a boxcar which had been converted into a house.  She had three brothers and one sister who have all preceded her in death.  As a child, the family moved around; but, she talked the most about growing up on the Horton Ranch in the Texas panhandle near Dalhart, Texas.  Faye and her siblings attended several schools in the area.  One of these schools was in Dalhart. She first met Dail Deen Miller when he was running around with one of her brothers.  She said she thought he had beautiful eyes.  They had three dates.  Their third date was when they eloped to Clayton, New Mexico to get married.  She was in the 9th grade and just 16 but told the Justice of the Peace she was 18.  Dail was 8 years older than she was and often told people he married her young so he could raise her the way he wanted.  He didn’t realize how stubborn she was. You never told Faye she couldn’t do something.  She would do it anyway just to spite you.  To this union, three children were born – Glenda Faye, Brenda Kay, and Bobby Dail.  She loved to tell people she raised nine kids.  Thomas and Barbara Davis were friends and had six children.  They were often gone on family emergencies and when they were,  their six kids stayed with Faye and Dail.  One of those children became her son-in-law.  She still claims them all as her kids.   

Faye and her sister learned to cook at an early age.  She often talked about standing on a chair at the stove when she was six with an apron tied around her neck while she and her sister cooked for the rest of the family who were out working in the fields.  That love of cooking followed both of them the rest of their lives.  Faye had a large collection of cook books which she read from cover to cover.  Her collection of cook books has been donated to the Ashland Public Library where others will get to enjoy them as much as she did. 

Faye also loved to sew.  She sewed her first dress when she was 8 and wanted a new dress for the Christmas program at school.  Her mother told her the only way she was getting a new dress was if she made it herself and handed her a piece of red corduroy.  So she made it herself.  Faye hand sewed her daughters’ dresses when they were little and made all her daughters’ school clothes after she got a sewing machine.  Faye also made her daughters’ wedding dresses.  After her daughters were grown and she had sewed all the clothes she could ever want, she started making Dail shirts.  They were usually colorful with things like airplanes or hot air balloons depicted on them.  Dail wore his unique shirts with pride.

Faye is preceded in death by her loving husband of 55 years 6 months and 17 days, her parents, her brothers and sister, and her son.  She is survived by her daughters Glenda and Wayne Harvey, Kay and Kenneth Davis, nine grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, six nephews, five nieces, four cousins, and three of her friends’ six children.  She will be greatly missed.