Miller, Maya, 1915-2006

Maya Miller was born June 29, 1915 in Los Angeles, California. She grew up and attended elementary school in Beverly Hills, and graduated from Principia High School in St. Louis, Missouri, and Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. She earned a Master’s degree in English from Cornell University and worked on a PhD at Stanford University. She married Richard Gordon Miller, an ichthyologist from Denison, Iowa, in 1940, and worked in San Francisco during World War II, while Dick was in the Pacific Theater. In 1945, the couple came to Nevada, where Maya taught English briefly at the University of Nevada, Reno. They had two children, Eric McClary Miller and Carson Ann (Kit) Miller.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Maya was involved in the welfare rights movement in Nevada with her friend and colleague, Ruby Duncan, lobbying at the state Legislature for better treatment and more respect for welfare recipients—who tended to be women and mothers—to help them get off public assistance. From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, Maya worked as the Chairperson on the Board of Trustees for Operation Life Community Development Corporation in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1974, at the request of several women leaders, Miller ran for the United States Senate, losing to Lt. Governor Harry Reid in the Democratic primary. At the time there were no women serving in the U.S. Senate, and her campaign drew national attention, funding and volunteers.

Maya Miller died May 30, 2006, at her home in Washoe Valley, Nevada.

Source:

"Maya Paine Miller," Nevada Women's History Project. https://nevadawomen.org/research-center/biographies-alphabetical/maya-miller/