Waco marks Pearl Harbor Day at Doris Miller Memorial (2024)

At Waco’s Pearl Harbor Day remembrance ceremony Thursday, Doris Miller’s family members called for a letter-writing campaign to President Joe Biden to encourage the Medal of Honor for their “Uncle Dorie.”

Cultural Arts of Waco Director Doreen Ravenscroft, a driving force behind the Doris Miller Memorial unveiled in 2018, read from a letter by Doris Miller’s eldest surviving niece, Desare Ray Allen, asking people to write letters to Biden.

“‘The request for Seaman Miller to receive the Medal of Honor is at the highest levels of government and we encourage all our friends and family to write letters to the president asking that Doris Miller be awarded the Medal of Honor,’” Ravenscorft read.

Seaman is a rank in the U.S. Navy, akin to airman in the Air Force or private in the Army and Marine Corps.

Allen asks that people send their letters to the president before Jan. 15 so that Doris Miller can receive the Medal of Honor during Black History Month, Ravenscroft said.

Around 200 to 300 people, including city dignitaries, Miller family members and veterans from across Texas and as far away as Brooklyn, New York, attended the Waco ceremony remembering Doris Miller and Pearl Harbor Day.

Pearl Harbor Day is remembered in the famed words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a speech to a joint session of Congress the following day, “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

That attack took 2,403 American lives and it came in the form of a strike force of 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft, launched from four heavy carries, bombing the U.S. Navy ships at anchor in Pearl Harbor Naval Station, on Oahu, Hawaii, including the battleship U.S.S. West Virginia.

Mess Attendant Doris Miller served aboard the West Virginia. As Waco City Council Member Jim Holmes recounted, Doris Miller came from a farm near Waco, played football for and graduated from a Waco high school and he was “quite a marksman.”

But in those days, the U.S. armed forces were segregated, and Black sailors were not trained to carry rifles or pistols, much less to operate the anti-aircraft guns and deck guns on battleships. Black sailors could only work in the dining hall or “mess,” or they could serve as an officer’s valet.

“Doris Miller could have stayed in the kitchen, in the mess hall, where it was safe, but he knew the right thing to do was to go and help save his mortally wounded captain,” Holmes said. “He knew the right thing to do was to fire one of those deck guns up at the attacking Japanese aircraft. And he knew the right thing to do was to help fish fallen sailors out of the sea.”

Doris Miller chose the harder right over the easier wrong on Dec. 7, 1941.

For his heroism, U.S. Navy Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz awarded him the Navy Cross in 1942.

At the beginning of Thursday’s ceremony. retired Baylor University law professor Gerald Powell read from the citation:

“For distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the fleet in Pearl Harbor, territory of Hawaii, by Japanese forces on Dec. 7, 1941. While at the side of his captain on the bridge, Miller, despite enemy strafing and bombing and in the face of a serious fire, assisted in moving his captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety, and later manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge.”

Doris Miller received the Navy Cross on May 27, 1942. He died about 18 months later, when his ship sank during the battle of the Gilbert Islands, on Nov. 24, 1943.

Doris Miller’s nieces, Brenda Haven and Florietta Miller, each said a few words during and after Thursday’s ceremony.

“Thank God for what Doreen and the city of Waco have done for us and for Uncle Dorie’s memory,” Haven said in an interview after the ceremony.

“The sleeper has awakened,” she said of people remembering Doris Miller and the effort to get him the Medal of Honor.

During the ceremony, Haven said she felt “overwhelmed.”

“A little bit of Uncle Dorie was in the history books when I was coming up, but thanks to you everyone will know what our uncle did for America,” she said to the crowd.

Florietta Miller said she also wants her sister to be remembered. Florietta’s sister, Vicky Gail Miller, wrote books about Doris Miller, including “A Silent Medal of Honor” and “Doris Miller: Pearl Harbor Hero.”

Among the veterans from Brooklyn came Bruce Copney, founder of the Brooklyn-based Dorie Miller Post 213 of the American Legion. Copney said Doris Miller is his hero.

“When I was young the military heroes were G.I. Joe, but my grandfather sat us down and told us the story of a real hero: Dorie Miller,” Copney said. “Dorie Miller has been my hero since I was child and when I founded American Legion Post 213, I convinced the others to name it for Dorie Miller.”