Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Louise “Betty Lou” Miller (Dooher) of Robbinsdale, Minnesota.

Born June 16, 1938, and reached her heavenly home on August 25, 2026 to be with her loving God and be reunited with Jerry, her loving husband of 37 years. She is survived by children Gregory (Diane), Paul (Jane), Mary Prince, Frederick, Michelle LeBlanc (John) & Jeremiah, grandchildren Kelsi, Jordan (Hans) Nathan (Amy), Bailey, Samantha (Lida), Dominic, Peter, Clara, Jackson, Sean, Isaiah, Marie, Michael and Teresa; great-grandchildren Ryder, Holden, Theo and Graham, along with many family and friends.

She is preceded in death by her husband Gerald “Jerry” Miller, her parents Anna (Mercier) and Thomas Dooher, her siblings Thomas Dooher, Lorraine Skelly, Margaret Zachman, Maryanne Dooher, OSB, Robert Dooher and Patty (Murphy) Lambert, along with beloved nieces and nephews, Anne Marie Dooher, Bobby Skelly, Michael Skelly, Neil Zachman Jr., Dick Zachman, Tony Dooher, Mary Jo (Dooher) Sicora and brothers-in-law Edward Miller, Roy Skelly, Neil Zachman, sisters-in-law Fran, Janae and Jan, plus many beloved family and friends.

Born in Minneapolis and raised on the north side, Betty Lou brought a spark of joy everywhere she went. She loved her parents and siblings dearly, never missing an opportunity to gather with them for birthdays, weddings, and holidays. She enjoyed babysitting her nieces and nephews, thrilled to become an aunt at the age of 8. She reveled in the love of her big brothers and sisters and learned many loving lessons of how to parent from them. Her best friend Patty Murphy moved in with the Doohers at age 12 and became a treasured part of the family. In September of 1954, Mom kissed her dad goodbye and had a premonition that she would never see him again. When her principal of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Girls School came to the door of her 10th grade classroom, Betty Lou knew why. She and Grandma Dooher prayed the rosary and cried night after night, missing him, seeking solace in their faith and finding healing through prayer and God’s transformative love.

Her working career started down the road from where she grew up, at Knight’s Pharmacy on West Broadway in Minneapolis, where she found herself concocting wonderful sugary drinks as a soda jerk. She loved that job. And it’s probably where she developed her passion for all things sugar related. Her sweet tooth was a trusted companion right to the very end. Fittingly, an ice cream cone was her last meal. She was the homecoming queen in high school and a beauty queen in every way, in our opinion!

As a young woman, she worked at Prudential Insurance, the building just off Highway 12 (which is 394 now). In her late teens, at her mother’s behest, she joined The Rosary Sodality at Ascension, a social group for young adult Catholics. That is where she met her future husband, Jerry - although they both recall meeting at a birthday party as 12-year-olds. Our dad was moved by the kindness and love of the Dooher family and fell head-over-heels in love with Mom’s delightful little nieces and nephews right from the start.

Her marriage put a temporary pause to her professional life. Now, the real work began - becoming a wife and raising six children. She changed diapers for around 14 consecutive years (her husband apparently wasn’t qualified for such a task). She made homemade Halloween costumes; provided rides to thousands of practices, games, and dance recitals; made seven lunches every morning and sent every child off to school with her gentle and loving, “Have a good day.” She made a special effort each year to find an affordable resort for our family to vacation at a cabin in Northern Minnesota. She would plan and pack, keep us fed on the way up and once there, join us on the beach with her lawn chair. She would clean and filet any fish we caught.

She made Christmas amazing on a very tight budget, allowing each of us to choose a cookie recipe from her well-used Betty Crocker cookbook to bake together with her. She wrapped presents into the wee hours of the night, let us set up the manger scene, and made decorating the tree a top-tier experience, bringing the joy of the Incarnation into our celebrations year after year. Lighting the 3-story-high spruce tree in her front yard was her “gift to Robbinsdale”. With the help of Greg, she had the tree professionally strung with beautiful blue lights and timed it to light up the nights from Thanksgiving through the end of our long Minnesota winters. The neighbors encouraged us to light it this summer as Mom made her way through illness and death. We were touched by the support of the Robbinsdale community and the ways this tree impacted their lives and spirits.

She opened up her home on many occasions, but especially on Christmas Day, helping us to stay connected to our dear cousins and their kids over the years. Those parties were famous for lasting until past 2:00 AM.

She LOVED birthdays, letting us each choose the meal and cake we wanted, right up until Greg’s 65th birthday this July. She loved having us all together but reveled in alone time with each of us. She wanted to be kept “up to date” on all of our career accomplishments, our friends and their kids, and what was happening at everyone’s schools. Being a mother was her greatest joy and accomplishment. And she was good at it! We hardly heard a harsh word from her. She was encouraging and positive and always available. How did she do that?!

Mom took being an aunt and a mother-in-law very seriously and dove in head-first, doling out love to her nieces, nephews, sons-in-law and daughter's in-law. She was touched and energized by how each one returned this love to her in their own unique way, right up until the day she died. We had unbelievable support from Diane, Jane and John, along with her nieces, nephews, grandchildren and their spouses to care for Mom throughout her life - right up to her dying moment.

She had a special connection to her Godchildren and their spouses, and noted that the process of becoming Kenny Thunder’s Godmother was one of the single most impactful spiritual experiences of her lifetime. She considered Eileen Skelly Gibbs one of her very best friends, with their daily chats, laughs and many trips. She was delighted to be “spoiled” by, and become dear friends with, Eileen’s husband John.

Betty Lou loved her cousins and their children, and bonded with the ones who were widowed after Dad died. They would have pajama parties on New Year’s Eve and singalongs on St. Patrick’s Day. She even traveled to a dude ranch in Colorado with cousin Janette at age 18, noting that she thinks their mothers wanted a little break from them!

Mom had too many friends to mention by name here. She put time and energy into friendships and took risks to make new friends every decade of her life. She was thoughtful and intentional about buying little gifts and picking out “just the right” card for everyone she cared about. And her friends were equally as thoughtful and kind to her, visiting when she was sick, calling to keep her company on lonely days and nights, planting flowers in her yard, shopping for her, telling her all the scores of the high school basketball games, bringing her cookies and singing to her when she needed spiritual care for the journey to Heaven.

Betty Lou went to nearly every sporting event of ours and the games Dad coached – often driving in difficult conditions and only accumulating one traffic ticket her whole life. She even watched the games Dad umpired and refereed! She especially treasured the years Dad coached football at the College of St. Thomas, joining the coaches’ wives for pre-game breakfasts, cheering in the stands, road trips, and the afterparties.

She was the prettiest mom in the neighborhood, and all our friends would ask if she was our sister. She kept cookies and caramels in a special drawer for us kids and our friends to enjoy at any time. She made summer fun, signing us up for sports, taking us to New Hope Pool, setting up the sprinkler for us to run through, making us root beer floats and the best hamburgers around! Our parents prioritized taking us to Como Zoo and a Twins game every summer, and Mom made sure the picnic lunch was packed and delicious. She showed us how to be planful, thoughtful, and that food is indeed a way to people’s hearts. As teens, we could cook frozen pizza anytime of the day or night, and she and Dad welcomed our friends and cousins to have fun and to have deep conversations with them about God, life, social justice, and, of course, sports.

The Millers take over McDonald’s - Once all of her children were in school, she headed back to the workforce. This time, at the Robbinsdale McDonald’s, where five of her children worked as teens. After a few years at the Golden Arches, Betty Lou traveled across the street to work for TCF Bank, where she did administrative work. From there, she went back to work at Prudential, sharing a ride with Jerry, who had moved to teach and coach at Benilde-St. Margaret’s. She made many dear, lifelong friends at all of her places of employment, especially her second stint at Prudential. Her performance reviews from Prudential were stellar! She was a highly regarded colleague and a talented executive assistant, learning 3 new software programs in her 50s and 60s.

Betty Lou’s husband Jerry died of melanoma at age 58, in 1996. Her faith and family helped carry the burden of that loss. She stated that she knew she would be ok because of all the strong women in her life who became widows at a young age and that she would “lean in” to female companionship. But the best salve came in the form of her 14 grandchildren and four great grandchildren and the joyous news of one more on the way! She absolutely adored her grandchildren. She looked after them any chance she got, hosting movie nights, sleepovers, and attending many of their activities.

Betty Lou treasured her Catholic faith and her relationship with God. As a child, she attended St. Anne’s Church and School in north Minneapolis. She learned to play the piano from “the nuns,” the Benedictine Sisters who staffed and ran the school. Once married, she and Jerry joined Ascension Church before they moved out to the suburbs in the parish boundaries of St. Raphael’s Church. They moved to Robbinsdale in 1977, where they attended Sacred Heart Church. There, Mom taught bible study classes and joined a widow's group at age 57, pushing herself to forge new friendships after a crushing loss. She shared that her grief group leader encouraged each new widow to write a letter to their spouse in heaven. Mom said when she was writing her letter to Jerry, she cried from the depths of her body, heaving and losing her breath, noting she heard sounds come out of her that she had never heard before. She did the work. She sought spiritual healing and missed our dad until the end.

Soon after, she joined The Church of St. Philip in north Minneapolis where dear friends Fr. Greg Tolaas was pastor and Fr. Dale Korogi was the organist, joining the choir, producing the weekly bulletin, and helping with Kids Club after school. And finally, when St. Philip’s merged with the Church of the Ascension, she wholeheartedly put her faith into action at her spiritual home, continuing her devotion to the choir and seeking out spiritual growth through all that Ascension had to offer. She even took voice lessons to improve her singing, culminating in two CDs of music, pushing herself creatively by recording the CDs in a professional recording studio.

She listened carefully to the gospel and was truly fed by the spiritual and theological insights of her pastor, Fr. Dale Korogi, pondering both the challenging and the comforting homilies. She was inspired by Jesus’ words, Fr. Dale, her fellow parishioners, and the staff of Ascension, to stand up for immigrants and pray for the love of God to be reflected in our society and government policies. Fr. Dale blessed her and blessed her again and came back repeatedly to pray with her and even yielded to her insistence that he play piano for her. And boy did he play, taking requests and nimbly avoiding the keys that were off in her untuned, antique piano. In the very last hours of her life, she was brought holy communion by Patricia Stromen, her friend and the parish administrator at Ascension. Food for the journey. Amen!

Betty Lou volunteered at all of the churches she attended, doing specialized clerical work, writing for the church bulletins, singing in the choir, along with the quiet service of bringing people communion, taking people grocery shopping and on errands. Throughout her married life and widowhood, she actively and joyfully sought spiritual growth through retreats, prayer groups, mass, personal reflection, time alone with God and mission trips. She traveled with St. Philip’s to Guatemala to stretch, grow, and serve, and three times to a Jesuit Mission in Jamaica, resulting in leaps of growth and understanding, along with loving, lifelong relationships.

Since Dad was averse to traveling, Mom took off in her later years! She went to California to visit Patty (Murphy) Lambert, along with trips to Arizona, Florida, Oregon, Georgia and even Ireland and Italy.

Betty Lou took relaxing seriously. She knew how to slow down and reflect on life and pray, turning her worries and concerns over to the Holy Spirit. She loved sitting on a deck, sitting by a lake, sitting in a booth at a restaurant, and sitting in her favorite chair and inviting people over to sit with her. She enjoyed reclining, watching every Minnesota Twins Baseball game she could, reminding us often, “you can’t win ‘em all!” She would get pumped up for Monday and Tuesday nights to watch The Voice, reporting things like “Snoop Dog picked a winner” and “John Legend gives the best advice to the contestants.” When she needed company, she would turn on Everybody Loves Raymond. When her best bud, granddaughter Bailey, was over, they would watch The Golden Girls. David Letterman kept her company many a night. For the last decade, she loved watching her all-time favorite show, Polka Spotlight – a local-access show featuring senior-citizen dancers (she knew all of them by name!) dancing to live polka music. She watched that show three or four times a day.

For the last 30 years, one of her hobbies was reading obituaries. She wanted to know if a cherished friend lost a loved one so she could send them a card. She was so good at sending cards to people. She also wanted to know if she herself lost a dear friend. We’re sure it was so she could say some prayers and send them on their way.

Well, Mom, we’ll read this one for you and send you on your way. Thank you for everything. We will look for you in the blue skies you loved, a beautiful lake view, in cookies and ice cream bars and cuddly babies, and in all of your offspring, and anytime we hear Perry Como or have a “song in our head,” or a Twins game score that we want to share with you, or smell hamburgers frying, or see a bird at the bird feeder, or find a bargain, or see Manhattans on the menu, or hear a polka song, or a Pepsi cracked, or when you send us a new friend or an inspiration to choose to be gentle instead of harsh; nonjudgmental, instead of quick to judge and silly instead of serious when the situation calls for it . . . We will miss you, and we love you more than you could possibly know. But most of all, we are grateful for the unconditional, gentle, consistent, sacrificial love you gave to us, our dad, our cousins, our friends, our spouses, our children and our grandchildren throughout our entire lives.

We want to again thank the care team of cousins, grandchildren, great grandchildren, friends, neighbors, Ascension community members, and family that helped make Mom’s wish of dying at home a reality and a homegoing journey of deep meaning and full of love. We are grateful to the team at Lifespark Hospice and Community Home Care for their steadfast care of Mom and attention to her needs, both physical and spiritual.

Celebration of Life at her spiritual home, The Church of the Ascension, 1723 Bryant Avenue North, Minneapolis. Thursday, September 3, 3:30-5:00 wake service in the church, 5:00 Funeral Mass followed by dinner in the social hall. Burial on Friday, September 4 at Gethsemane Cemetery, New Hope. Memorial gifts to Church of the Ascension. You are encouraged to wear spiritwear representing your high school or college. Mom’s favorite questions were “Where did you go to school?” And “Where do you teach/coach?”