Guide to the Roger Miller Aviation Slide Collection

Biography of Biography or History

(This biographical sketch was provided by the donor himself and is presented here with only minor editing.)

Roger Miller (b. 1933) was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio. In about the 10th grade, Miller began spending much of his time at Middletown's Hook Field Municipal Airport. This led to his helping aircraft owners work on and clean their airplanes, which in turn led to receiving some aircraft rides in return. As soon as he was old enough, the airport fixed base operator (George Wedekind) put Miller to work after school and on the weekends. As soon as he could, Miller learned to fly and received his private pilot license before finishing high school.

Miller wanted to be involved with airplanes, either flying or working on them. He spent almost five years in the Air Force as a jet engine mechanic. After getting out of the service, he got married, and it was not very long before his ideas about flying or working on airplanes as a career went away. Miller spent 30 years in the maintenance organization at Armco/AK Steel before retiring as a shift manager.

Miller continued his interest in aviation by mostly taking or collecting photographs of airplanes. As that interest developed, he also became very much interested in local and area history. Miller has done some writing on local history as well as some on aviation history and automobiles built in the Middletown area. Along with others, he put together three books for Arcadia Publishing, wrote a weekly (2000-2015) local history column for the Middletown Journal (now part of the Hamilton Journal-News). He has done a lot of work on photograph collections holdings at the the MidPointe Library System (Middletown Public Library), a project he started in the summer of 1999 with the library's receiving the George C. Crout Middletown history collection. Other collections have been added to this one, and Miller has been involved in digitizing, describing, and adding material to the library's web site.

Roger Miller presently lives in a retirement community in Monroe, Ohio, with his wife.

Scope and Content

The collection consists mainly of color photographic slides depicting aircraft, mostly civilian planes, with content dates spanning 1926 to 1993; however, the bulk of the material dates between 1959 and 1988. The slides were in most cases created, and in some cases collected from others, by Roger Miller. Other collectors or photographers whose images are represented in the collection include Andrew Zilliox and George "JR" Wedekind.

The images primarily depict the exteriors of aircraft (mainly fixed wing airplanes) but to a lesser extent, images occasionally depict pilots, aircraft workers, cockpits, structural details, hangars, or air show visitors or displays. For the most part, aircraft are shown on the ground at air fields, usually ones located in the Miami Valley region of Ohio, especially Middletown and Hamilton, as well as Dayton, Moraine, Cincinnati, and other Ohio cities. Other locations throughout the United States, as well as Japan and Korea, are also represented.

The collection is arranged in a single series of photographic slides, organized according to the donor's original order and filing system, including a file number, reel number, and slide number. Where possible or relevant, an airplane's registration number, year of manufacture, maker, model, serial number, and engine information have been included in the item listing.

Individual item descriptions provided by the donor is included in the front of most folders. These descriptions may provide additional information about photograph location, photographer or collector (if different than Miller), or the airplane owner (if known). Information is sometimes written on the cardboard casing of the slide itself as well.

Of particular note in the collection is an original Piper Sales Kit, dating to about 1953 or 1954, including several stereoviews (depicting primarily Piper PA-20, PA-22, or PA-23), original stereoviewer, and metal travel case. A kit such as this one would have been carried by aircraft salesmen.

Statement of Arrangement

Restrictions on Use

Copyright restrictions may apply. Unpublished manuscripts are protected by copyright. Permission to publish, quote or reproduce must be secured from the repository and the copyright holder. Note that any copyrights to the images in the Andrew Zilliox and George Wedekind files are assumed to be retained by their respective creators.

Restrictions on Access

There are no restrictions on accessing materials in this collection.

MS-223, William F. Yeager Aviation Collection MS-344, Walter Matthews Jefferies Aviation Collection MS-353, Robert L. Cavanagh Aviation Collection MS-436: George "JR" Wedekind Aviation Collection

Aviation books and aviation magazines, received with the collection, have been cataloged and placed on the shelves in the Special Collection and Archives Reading Room.

Subject Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

Subjects:

Persons:

Places:

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Preferred Citation

[Description of Item, Date, Box #, Folder #], MS-500, Roger Miller Aviation Slide Collection, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.

Acquisition Information

The collection was donated to Special Collections and Archives by Roger L. Miller on September 18, 2013.

Processing Information

Finding aid written according to DACS standards by Ed O’Shaughnessy, John Armstrong, and Lisa Rickey, August 2017.

Other Finding Aid

The finding aid is available on the Special Collections & Archives, Wright State University Libraries web site at
https://wright.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/748.