The son as a father

Down the street from Miller's office, Greg sits in his office at Larry H. Miller Toyota. He is tall and slender with a full head of brown hair swept back and vivid blue eyes. He grew up resenting his father, but he has followed in his footsteps. Same bad grades. Same misbehavior. Same native intelligence and gift for articulation and introspection. Same mannerisms. Like his father, too, he started in the parts department, sweeping floors when he was 13. He struck out on his own for a while to prove to himself that he could succeed on his own, then returned to work for his father. He is now general manager of the store.

He can remember an angry moment in his youth, standing at the top of the stairs in the family house and shouting at his father, "I hate the car business!. I'll do anything but the car business!" because it had robbed him of a father. But here he is.

There is one big difference. "I spend time with my kids," says Greg, the father of six. "I am their father figure. I make a great effort to see to that. It's the benefit of hindsight. I can recognize the void in my life. I don't want to perpetuate those mistakes. I attend the dance recitals and coach the junior Jazz teams."

He says his wife, Heidi, saved "my sanity." He had a horrible temper in his youth, and to prove it he'll show you a deformed knuckle. "It's from going through so many walls and doors." When he and his future wife were dating, she delivered an ultimatum: Lose the anger or lose her. He lost the anger. He is happily married.

At the end of the day, Greg admires and respects his father and he believes he owes him a great debt of gratitude for at least one thing: "He worked 20 years of 80-hour weeks to build a resource or a platform to work from so we don't have to pay the same price. I don't have to work 80-hour weeks to have a nice lifestyle. I can be with my kids. He did that. Otherwise, if I didn't look at it like that, it would be easy to be bitter. I'm not bitter. There are so many positives in my life. I have a great life."

A postscript

There is one postscript, one bittersweet irony: Of all the strange twists and turns of fate that life dealt Miller, this is the most ironic — late in his middle age, he is raising a grandchild as a son. Zane Miller, now 12, calls Larry and Gail Dad and Mom. It's almost as if fate decided that because Miller didn't spend time at home when he was needed, it gave him another son and said, "Try again."