He was doing almost everything right. Trying hard to quit a life-long cigarette habit. Exercising. Getting a physical exam. But since the day he returned from Vietnam in 1967, Richard E. Miles always felt he was living on borrowed time, that his number would come up just like it did for Marine buddies who died in the war.
It did last week in his cardiologist’s office on Pill Hill in Sandy Springs.
Just after completing a stress test on a treadmill, Mr. Miles died, his high school sweetheart and wife of 44 years just yards away, reading in the waiting room. He would have turned 64 on Aug. 12.
“We had both gone together,” said his widow, Rhonda, who had been his “only girl” since they were teenagers at the now defunct Sandy Springs High School. “I’d had a heart attack back in ’93, he had a history of heart problems in his family, so we just went to the same doctor. I’d checked out fine.”
Suddenly, she “heard a commotion, someone yelling. The receptionist came out and asked me to come in.”
Mr. Miles was rushed to nearby St. Joseph’s Hospital but couldn’t be revived.
“The doctor said there was nothing on his EKG that showed any problem,” Mrs. Miles said.
A memorial will be Wednesday at Sandy Springs Chapel after a visitation from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. The body will be cremated, and in lieu of flowers the family has asked that donations be sent to Veterans for Common Sense at http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/.
Mr. Miles was proud of his Vietnam service but rarely discussed it, said elder son Richard H. Miles, 43, of Temple.
“There was such a stigma if you were a Vietnam vet that I guess he couldn’t talk about how proud he was for serving his country,” said his son, a district manager for Waffle House. “But my son is now in the Marines and it’s a tradition in our family going back to my granddad,” a POW in World War II.
The late Mr. Miles’ younger son, Charles Sheehan-Miles, 39, of Oxford, Ala., wrote in a tribute to his dad that “your uniform from the United States Marine Corps hangs in your closet, and your quiet pride in your own service in Vietnam was an example for me.
“I never knew much about your experiences until I came back from the Gulf War,” Mr. Sheehan-Miles said. “I remember when I realized that I wasn’t prepared to kill again, you didn’t become angry or judgmental. Instead, you hugged me, said you were proud of me and stood by me.”
He said he’ll “forever prize the moment on Christmas day 15 years ago when I gave you the shadowbox with your own medals, mine and granddaddy’s together and your eyes went red with tears of pride.”
Mr. Miles also is survived by five grandchildren, three girls and two boys, including Christopher, a Marine stationed in California, and brother Robert Miles, of Locust Grove.
It was a different era in 1965, when it was common for young men to volunteer rather than wait to be drafted. The late Mr. Miles joined the Marines “on the buddy system” with two high school friends, including Bob Case, 63, of Sandy Springs.
Though saddened, Mr. Case said people who survive combat become somewhat hardened to death. And many, he said, learn to live a day at a time, realizing they’ve been given the gift of time that many of their friends had not.
“I’m not a hero, but you come to accept it,” said Mr. Case, who was a helicopter door-gunner.
He remembers his buddy as “an intellectual type” but also that he had a great sense of humor and was often daring.
“We used to brew beer in 55-gallon drums in his basement,” Mr. Case laughed.
Son Richard Miles was at work when his mother called. His dad had started taking a highly-advertised prescription drug to help him quit a 40-year smoking habit only a few days before his death.
He loved books and “simple things.”
“He taught us a lot,” Richard Miles said. “We don’t even know yet how much we will miss him.”
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