Walter
Miller: A Lifelong Collector
Walter
Miller
studied
history at
college,
built
a
successful
business
dealing
in
automobile
literature,
and
made
a
hobby
of
world
travel.
He
drew from
all
of these
interests
in
assembling the
Walter Miller
Automobile Memorabilia
Collection
which was first
opened
to
the
public
at
The
Museum
of
Automobile
History in Syracuse,
New York.
That
collection
traces the
first
century
of
the
automobile,
and
the
amazing
changes
it
wrought
on
life
around
the
world. The museum
and The Miller
Collection are
now located
in North Carolina.
 Mr.
Miller
grew
up
in
DeWitt,
New
York,
a
suburb
of
Syracuse.
Looking
at
a
couple
of picture-books that his father had on automobile history, he became fascinated
with the subject as a boy of just five years. He started on his later career
as a dealer
of automobilia
when
he was a
teen-ager by buying
a box of
LIFE magazines
at a garage
sale. He pulled out the automobile ads, and then sold them for a nice profit
... even
at a quarter
a piece.
After graduating
from the
State University
of New York
at Binghamton
with a major in management and a minor concentration of history courses, he enrolled
in a masters-degree program in business administration at McGill University in
Montreal.
Afterward, Miller decided to try to build a business of his own. The choice to
deal in
literature
connected
with cars
was a natural
one, even
though it
meant turning
down a career opportunity with a Fortune 500 company. Most of the material known
as "automobile literature" was produced by the car companies themselves: sales
brochures, repair manuals, and showroom items. The term does not refer to books
written about cars, nor to reprinted or newly printed items, but to original
source material.
Walter Miller's automobile literature business has grown
to be the largest in the world, with over 2,000,000 pieces in
stock. In building the company through the years, Miller
purchased several major collections that also became part of his own collection, now owned by The Museum of
Automobile
History.
One of
the
first
was the personal library of Floyd Clymer, the most well-known
publisher of automobile books from the 1930's to the
1960's. The library included personal letters written
to Mr. Clymer by such notable figures as Ransom E. Olds and Henry Kaiser. Another major collection that was
acquired is
that
of the late J.L. Elbert, the author of a respected book on the Duesenberg. A resident of
a
small
town in Missouri, Mr. Elbert was dedicated to the beauty
and
importance of automobilia. His collection included,
among
other things, showroom brochures from nearly every
automobile
made from his youth during the 1920's until the 1970's. His house was literally filled to the brim! In
fact,
the collection filled two tractor-trailers when it
was moved. Walter Miller had originally dedicated The
Museum
of
Automobile
History to the memory of J.L. Elbert.
Walter Miller travels extensively and has
been to at least fifty countries. He has driven to California
and back ten times, and has been around the world twice. Along the way, his eyes are always open
for items related to the automobile. "I
was in Russia for a month," he recalled, "And I took the trans-Siberia
railway. Everytime the train stopped, there'd
be peddlers waiting, and everytime, I'd get a
little Russian car - about twenty different models,
of cars which aren't even being made anymore." The
Russian models became a part of his collection.
At a street market in front of the Red Fort in
New Delhi, India, one of the vendors had some
antiques for sale. Rummaging around, Miller found
a tabletop automobile, handmade in brass to hold
spices. He judged that it was from the 1910's,
when India was part of the British Empire. "In
Mexico one time, I saw some peasants selling
religious icons, some of which were shaped like
cars - cars filled with skeletons!" Miller
recalled. Anything at all that reflects people
and their connection to cars was of interest
- including the icons. As a historian,
he sees the serious purpose behind the
fun of the items that he collected. He points
out that there is no collection like it anywhere
else. There are no cars at
this automobilia collection. That fact, by itself,
makes a bold statement.
To Miller, the automobile is the single most
important invention of our time, maybe of
all time, and its effect can be seen most accurately in
the items that people have made to reflect it: "I don't
believe that autos themselves reveal, or teach, you as
much about history as the items that surround them," he
maintains. As the collection of one man, drawn
together through more than thirty years and from
several continents, Mr. Miller's collection, currently
housed
at
The Museum of Automobile History in North Carolina, is
an
individual
reaction
to the monumental influence of the car.
It is not the
selection of a committee or an institution, but it is
a memorable automobile trip, for
Miller and everyone who has been able to see the collection.
With
the
overlapping
sensibilities of a collector, a historian,
and an international traveler, Walter Miller has been uniquely equipped
to amass a collection of automobilia that is not only
the largest in the world, but one that has
the scope and detail to become a true Museum of Automobile
History.
Selected images from the Miller Collection and the museum
when
it was located in Syracuse are available in the Miller
Collection Website Gallery in the Activities
section. |
