Glenna Lea Miller

Memorial services will be held Saturday, August 3, 2013, at 11 a.m. at her beloved St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Pampa, TX. Glenna Lea served St. Matthew’s many years as a faithful and devoted communicant, Senior Warden, vestrywoman, director of the Martha Guild, and longtime member of the Altar Guild.

She was born inside the teacherage at Vernon, Texas, on March 11, 1927. The teacherage—a joint school building and teacher residence—was where her parents, Clovis Balford (C.B.) and Allie Hennen Couch, both raised Glenna Lea and her older sister, Clova Lila, and educated the school-aged children of the Vernon area.

In 1934, the family moved to Corsicana, Texas, when Mr. Couch became superintendent of the I.O.O. F. Orphanage. For the rest of her life, Glenna Lea remained grateful to the orphans at “The Home” for their welcome embrace of her and their ongoing kindnesses, both when she arrived that first Valentine’s Day and across the seven years that followed.

Glenna Lea moved to Austin, TX in 1941 when her father opened a bookstore on Congress Avenue, one block from the state capital. Amid the walls of bookshelves, she honed her lifelong love of reading and learning. During her high school and college years, Glenna Lea developed her theatrical and musical talents, including her memorable voice. During World War II, she sang in a women’s trio and acted with a traveling drama troupe that performed for soldiers stationed at military bases in Austin, San Antonio, Wimberly, and throughout Central Texas. As a model for Mears Studio, her face adorned the sides of two-story office buildings in Austin as well as student ink blotters distributed across the UT campus.

At UT, she served as an officer of the Curtain Club and acted alongside such notables as Pat Hingle, Tommy Jones, Jeannette Cliff, and other Broadway and Hollywood performers. She graduated from the University of Texas (UT) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA). She met her future husband, Jack Ormand Miller, on the UT stage where the pair acted together in numerous collegiate theatrical productions. The couple married April 18, 1948 in Austin and later lived briefly in Coronado, CA during the Korean War and Jack’s Navy service. Their first two children were born in Austin before the family moved to Pampa, TX in 1954 where their two youngest children were later born.

Glenna Lea and her husband were active in the Pampa Little Theater, starring in many plays, together and apart, as well as “breaking down” productions. She narrated many special events and fundraisers in Pampa, including annual fashion shows produced by Doug Coon of Behrman’s. She also substitute taught English, Speech and Chemistry at Pampa High School, the latter much to the amusement of her husband and children.

In her later years, Glenna Lea treasured the regular trips she took across the United States with a group of special women friends. A 1990 trip to London with one daughter and son-in-law, during the first leg of their honeymoon, remained both a delightful memory and a long-running family joke.

She joined Thelma Bray in developing and nurturing Pampa’s Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center in 1991. Glenna Lea worked many tireless hours at Chatauqua and other local events, passionately spreading the word about Pampa’s most notable folk singer and activist.

In 2006, Glenna Lea (and her cat, Precious) moved to Katy, Texas, to live with her oldest daughter, Mimi, and be closer to her two other daughters and their families. Time spent at the theater, “Met in HD” opera, and movies entertained her along with regular dining out at “too many restaurants for one town.”

Her husband, Jack Miller, died in August, 1994. Also predeceasing Glenna Lea were her parents, her beloved “Sister,” Clova Lila Walters; her brother-in-law, Ruthford Walters; her grandson, Trey Stockton; and her son-in-law, Doug Stockton.

Survivors include her son, Michael Miller of Plano, Texas; her three daughters, Dr. Mimi Miller and Merrilynn Stockton, both of Katy, Texas, and Melanie Miller of Sugar Land, TX; her son-in-law, Chuck Wolf of Sugar Land, TX; her nine grandchildren, Meaghan Miller of Dallas, Texas and Michael Miller II, of College Station, Texas; Zack Stockton of Katy, TX, Katie Stockton of Birmingham, AL, Jenny Stockton of Nacogdoches, TX; Angela Tullos of Flower Mound, TX, Amy Sayre of Carrollton, TX, and David Wolf of Frisco, TX; and her three great-grandchildren, Ethan and Emma Sayre of Carrollton, TX, and Caitlin Tullos of Flower Mound, TX; and her cat, Precious. Also mourning her passing are Glenna Lea’s two devoted nieces, Lila Ruth Moorer of Nacogdoches, TX, and Mary Lea Dodd of Fort Collins, CO, and their families.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made in Glenna Lea’s name to any of her favorite organizations, which include: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Pampa, TX; Friends of the Pampa Library; or Good Samaritan Christian Services in Pampa, TX.

The family remains eternally grateful to all of the skilled, devoted, and loving care offered by every person and pet at Sunrise of Cinco Ranch in Katy, TX. Their names are too numerous to list here but each of them helped to make the final nine months of Glenna Lea’s life an experience of unparalleled love and grace.