Harvey Lincoln Miller, Jr.

Harvey Lincoln Miller, Jr., born January 28, 1923, in Moline, Illinois, was the first child of Harvey Sr. and Elsie (Anderson) Miller. He died on August 29, 2026, at the age of 103 — “and a half,” as he was careful to remark on July 28. He was preceded in death by his wife, Eileen; his sister, Marilyn; his brother, Derek; and his grandson-in-law, Tyler Hopkins (Karly Nicole).

Harvey married Eileen Jonsen on May 6, 1951, at the Harper Seventh-day Adventist Church, beginning a union that endured for 66 years. He is survived by his daughters, Kris (Craig) Tompkins of Tahuya, Michelle (Gary) Meyer of Redlands, California, and Jana (Raed) Fahmy of Gig Harbor; grandchildren Kurt, Karly Nicole, Kyle, and Kelsey Meyer (Robert Mitchell), and Jared, Daren, and Andrea Fahmy (Sam McCarthy); step-grandchildren Tammy (Gary) Forman and Travis Tompkins; four great-grandchildren; and a niece and nephews.

As the last survivor of eight cousins and two siblings, Harvey’s passing marks the end of an era. He is mourned by a younger generation for whom he was a treasured connection to their parents and to a time now passed.

The Great Depression brought hard times to the young Miller family, which by the 1930s had grown to include Harvey’s younger sister, Marilyn, and baby brother, Derek. After the failure of his fuel distribution enterprise, Harvey Sr. operated a small bicycle repair business. Harvey Jr. — “Junie” to his adoring mother — helped in the shop, likely laying the foundation for the handyman skills he would hone throughout his life. He admired both of his parents immensely and often recalled with pride that his father would pay local boys a dollar or two for an abandoned junk bicycle, refurbish it, and sell it for $10.

A significant event in Harvey’s childhood was a visit to his home by an Adventist colporteur selling books, an encounter that introduced his Methodist mother to a new religious community. Adolescent Harvey eagerly embraced the tenets of the denomination, giving up meat and movies, Cokes and comic books. His subsequent attendance at schools operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church solidified the belief system he held dear for the remainder of his life. He attributed his longevity, in part, to the health principles advocated by the church.

For nearly 90 years, Harvey actively supported his local congregations, first in Harper and later in Port Orchard. He held numerous church offices, taught Bible classes, and contributed his building and engineering skills to construction projects. For many years, Sundays often found Harvey and Eileen working at the church construction site. In the early years at the Harper church, he contributed to worship services by playing the pump organ. His love of musical praise continued through seasonal Christmas caroling and Sabbath afternoon group hymn singing at local retirement and nursing homes.

In 1937, the family loaded up their 1929 Packard — Harvey always reminisced with great specificity about the automobiles of his youth — and headed west to Washington, likely encouraged by his mother, Elsie, whose sister had previously relocated to Vashon Island. After a brief stay in Seattle, where the bicycle shop was reprised, the family settled in Southworth to be near the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS), where Harvey Sr. had found employment.

An avid student, Harvey attended Seattle Junior Academy in tenth grade and completed his junior and senior years at Auburn Adventist Academy, an SDA boarding school. The Academy provided on-campus jobs to help students defray the cost of tuition, room, and board. Harvey worked in the furniture factory mill room, running a 12-inch table saw and developing both a facility for and an enjoyment of woodworking.

Although he was class valedictorian at his graduation in 1940, Harvey was apparently not encouraged to attend college. Instead, his father steered him directly toward a job as a shipfitter at PSNS. He continued working there throughout World War II, commuting with his father. Classified 4-F because of severe pectus, Harvey later referred to his work at the shipyard as his “GI Bill,” because it ultimately allowed him to resume his education.

In 1945, he enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle. Harvey was a member of multiple honor societies and graduated summa cum laude in 1949 with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. A particularly happy result of this hiatus in his academic endeavors was the chronological overlap at UW with fellow Southworth resident Eileen. Ride-sharing led to a closer acquaintance, and closer acquaintance led to romance.

Harvey’s passion for engineering made him one of the fortunate people for whom work was genuinely a joy. After graduating from college, he worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, headquartered on a pier in Seattle’s Elliott Bay, until 1965. Harvey even enjoyed incorporating inspections of dam construction sites into family outings, giving him opportunities to explain to his daughters the details of his contributions to public infrastructure.

He began moonlighting for Hadley Properties in 1962 and transitioned to full-time — and then some — employment there in 1965. His structural design work at Hadley included engineering high-rise buildings in Seattle and Hawaii. Never one to take much time away from work — he sometimes seemed convinced the office could not function without him — project travel to Honolulu and Maui allowed for an upgraded pretense of a family vacation while he worked. Eileen and the girls enjoyed trips to the islands for several years. His work with Hadley also brought international travel, including trips to Japan, Italy, and Scotland.

After nine years as a senior structural engineer at the Seattle firm KPFF Consulting Engineers, Harvey retired in 1995. A few years of leisure allowed for more extended visits with his daughters and their families in California, but retirement did not last. In 2001, Harvey resumed working as a part-time employee in the Public Works Department at PSNS. In June 2004, he retired for a second — and final — time.

During his lengthy professional career, Harvey’s days were long. Commuting to Seattle across Puget Sound, he logged thousands of hours aboard Washington State Ferries. He used the morning commute for daily devotionals and the evening commute for one of his famous naps.

Despite his workload, Harvey found time to put his carpentry abilities and other practical skills to use in building the two homes in Southworth where his daughters grew up. His collection of saws and tools was also put to work on smaller projects: outdoor furniture, planters, fences, and wooden shapes for Eileen’s painting and crafts. Harvey was your man for designing and executing a construction project — unless you wanted a quick result. Nothing was going to be slapped together on his watch.

Throughout his working years, Harvey and his family often spent Sundays in the yard and garden. In retirement, he brought his characteristic meticulousness to cultivating dahlias. He made wooden marking stakes and carefully dug up, labeled, sorted, and stored the tubers each winter. He and Eileen enjoyed annual outings to a dahlia farm in Puyallup to choose new varieties. Among friends and neighbors, Harvey was known for his willingness to divide and share both his tubers and his flowers. A number of gardens likely continue to produce beautiful blooms that serve as a living tribute to his hobby.

Harvey and Eileen loved playing games in the evenings: Scrabble, Hand & Foot, Five Crowns, Numbles, Probe, Skip-Bo, and many more. For decades, raucous rounds of Rook and other games were enjoyed with local friends on Saturday nights. In later years, as part of a faith-based group of friends, they traveled to many memorable destinations, sharing adventures in Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and even white-water rafting through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River.

During his college years, Harvey and a friend built a kayak. Forty years later, Harvey and Eileen were still enjoying the water as they owned two boats with several other couples, including a 50- foot vintage Grand Banks. They ventured out with friends, children, and grandchildren on trips ranging from a few hours on Puget Sound to multi-day journeys farther afield. These outings succeeded in pulling Harvey away from his work and gave him precious time with his grandchildren. During the day, everyone took in the beauty of creation, with breaks to savor Eileen’s cooking. After the sun dipped below the horizon, the Rook deck came out. The bonds of friends and family were occasionally tested during hotly contested bids, but regardless of the outcome, everyone went to bed having relished each other’s company.

Other retirement pastimes included reading, Sudoku, and joining Eileen each evening to watch Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. He also put his precision and perfectionist tendencies to good use assisting Eileen with her quilting, calculating measurements and expertly wielding the rotary cutter.

Harvey took great pleasure in interacting with his grandchildren. He put his construction abilities to work building a small, take-apart playhouse — twice, because his first attempt was an inch too large to fit in the trunk of the car for transport to California. An engineering mistake? The occasion was his first grandchild’s first birthday. A treehouse followed, and over the years he became an excellent consultant on countless school and craft projects.

Harvey enjoyed having a young audience to receive his accumulated knowledge, trivia, and advice. Summer trips to Grandma and Grandpa’s house often involved outings to museums, where Harvey would diligently read every word on every sign to his grandchildren. All that reading could tire him out. The trip home frequently required a pit stop so Harvey could take a brief nap in a parking lot before tackling the rest of the drive.

One of his most frequently repeated tales involved snoozing during high school French class while sitting by the window after lunch. When the teacher called on him, his classmate Orabelle would nudge him awake. Harvey would reply in French, “Please repeat the question.” The teacher would comply, and Harvey, of course, would answer correctly. He received an A+. Harvey loved to sleep, and nobody slept more than him anytime and anywhere. He passed down his napping trait to his children and grandchildren — two of which were diagnosed with narcolepsy.

Harvey always had a joke or story ready, no matter how clichéd or how often repeated — especially in his later years — and he delivered each one with the same energy and gusto as though he had just thought of it. When asparagus or mango appeared on the table, the family knew which story was coming. The grandkids had fun guessing what he would tell next.

Those who knew Harvey as children may remember the reverse-psychology ploy he perhaps overused to encourage them to eat foods they were reluctant to try. Harvey would insist that the child not eat the food so there would be more for him. Occasionally, it even worked.

A trip with Grandma and Grandpa could also mean a stop at A&W for Harvey’s favorites: a root beer milkshake and cheese curds. Although Harvey enjoyed Eileen’s renowned cooking, he developed his own distinctive breakfast menu: oatmeal with raisins, refried beans with extra- mild salsa, steamed broccoli and carrots, grape juice, half a grapefruit or banana, and perhaps a piece of toast or pastry. As the years went on and his eating slowed, breakfast could stretch nearly until midday — but it prepared him for whatever activities Eileen had planned.

Harvey’s enthusiasm for engineering became the foundation of a long mentoring relationship with Jay Spady. Combined with their shared faith, it grew into a deep and enduring friendship. Jay brightened Harvey’s final years of decreased mobility with regular visits. He researched places and events from Harvey’s life, sparking memories and even creating opportunities for outings. One particularly memorable example came when Jay tracked down the 1929 Packard in which the Miller family had migrated from the Midwest. He arranged for Harvey to visit the car and hear the story of its restoration from the family who had purchased it from Harvey Sr. decades earlier.

Harvey’s 103 years spanned advances that would have been almost unimaginable during his childhood. He was generally an early adopter, transitioning from slide rule to calculator to computer. He took readily to online shopping, with blissful disregard for the carbon footprint of having a box of generic-brand crackers or a can of Happy Belly soup delivered directly to his door.

After Eileen passed away, Harvey initially continued living in the home that had been built for them on the bluff near the Southworth ferry landing. Eventually, he moved into Jana and Raed’s home, where family cared for him until 2024. Jared and Daren helped with Harvey’s care, including driving him to medical appointments. Jared recalls how Harvey would light up the office, joking with the staff and making them smile. Nurses and staff would tell Jared that Harvey was their favorite. He had a way of connecting with people and bringing a little bit of himself into their day.

At the age of 101, Harvey decided he needed more constant attention and full-time caregivers, so he made the transition to a small group home in Gig Harbor. He enjoyed being waited on and snoozing in his comfortable recliner. He would happily rouse himself to greet Jay, family members, and the other few, much appreciated, visitors for another session of reminiscing about days gone by.

Harvey’s love for God and his assurance of eternal life through the grace of Christ were the bedrock of his existence. As his life drew toward its close, he often reiterated his conviction that he would soon be resting until his resurrection at Jesus’ second coming. We anticipate a grand reunion on that day.

We have been blessed by Harvey’s example of integrity, loyalty, compassion, faith, hard work, humor, and devotion to family. As we mourn him and miss him, we will aspire to carry that legacy forward.

A celebration of the life of Harvey L. Miller, Jr. will be held on October 3, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. at the Port Orchard Seventh-day Adventist Church, 5000 Bethel Rd. SE, Port Orchard, Washington. Harvey’s resting place is in the small, mostly family-maintained, community Sedgwick Cemetery, where he joins his wife, Eileen, and his parents.

Remembrances may be made to Sedgwick Cemetery, c/o Ann Northcutt, 6158 Parkside Dr., Anacortes, WA 98221, or to the Port Orchard Seventh-day Adventist Church Worthy Student Fund, P.O. Box 165, Port Orchard, WA 98366, or online.