Obituary: Huntington Beach’s Jim Miller remembered for his aloha spirit
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A paddle out ceremony will be held Saturday morning to honor Jim Miller, a Huntington Beach resident and avid surfer who died on the evening of Jan. 1 after a battle with liver cancer.
Miller was 74 years old. He died at home with his son, Kelly, by his side.
He worked locally as a real estate agent.
“He was a good guy, for sure,” said his friend Dave Reynolds, who would surf with Miller at the Cliffs break in Huntington Beach and go on surfing trips around the world with him including to Peru and El Salvador. “He was a guy you would want to have for a friend. If you needed someone to bail you out or help you move something, that’s the guy.”
The paddle out will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Cliffs, near Tower 24. Supporters are encouraged to bring flowers for the paddle out and memories to share.
Miller was born in 1951 in Southern California and grew up around the Long Beach area, said his daughter, Selina Bishop. The family moved to Alaska in the mid-1970s, where Miller started using a monoboard and snowboard.
He switched to a surfboard after moving to Huntington Beach in 1987.
Miller was known as a generous man, with both time and money. KC Fockler, the education program coordinator of the Surfrider Foundation’s north Orange County chapter, said Miller donated thousands of dollars to the cause over the years.
“You make your own family around where you live,” Bishop said. “As far as participating in anything to help anyone, he definitely would do that. If you’re walking by his condo and he sees that you don’t have shoes on your feet, he would give you a pair of shoes. That’s the kind of guy he is. He would walk right up to a stranger and have a conversation, and sit there for an hour. He just really had a knack for being able to connect to someone.”
She added that her father was honored to go to paddle outs to honor those in the surf community. Now, one is being held in his honor.
“With his passion for surfing, it’s great that he can be memorialized in that way and be put out to sea,” Bishop said, adding that she will be watching from the shore. Miller’s grandchildren will also participate.
Miller’s good friend Karen Scorah, who checked in on him twice a day for the last couple of years, said he had a “heart of gold.”
“He was just a pillar of the community,” Scorah said. “Everybody knew him. Just a real good human.”
In addition to his two adult children, Miller is survived by 15 grandchildren and step-grandchildren, two step-great-grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
