Abilene High great Millerman dies at 80

April 23--Abilene High great Jim Millerman, who helped the Eagles to state titles in both track and football in 1954, died early Friday morning at his home in Dallas. Millerman, a 2014 inductee into the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame, was 80 years old.

With a celebrated high school career that earned him an athletic scholarship to Baylor and a career in insurance that spanned more than half a century -- much of that in Abilene -- Millerman's impact on his hometown extended well beyond any cinder track or football field.

In fact, for those who knew him well, Millerman's substantial athletic talent finished a distant second behind his character.

"I would think that Jim would be a son that every parent would ever want to have," said Cullen Hunt, who went to high school and played football with Millerman. "He never got in trouble, was always liked, was a great student, a great athlete, a great friend. Every time I saw him, he always had a smile on his face and seemed happy all the time. He's going to be greatly missed.

"The world really is lesser without Jim."

Added fellow Abilene High graduate and Big Country Athletic Hall of Famer Carlton Stowers: "Jim was a hell-of-a nice guy. He's one of those you hate to see go."

Diagnosed with a rare and fast-moving form of cancer last fall, Millerman's condition had been in steady decline, Hunt said. But that made Friday's news no less difficult to hear.

"He was just one of those guys that you say, 'This can't be happening to him,'" Hunt said. "His wife has had cancer for 10 years or more, and he's taken care of her for all these years, and now he gets this, and it works so fast. But he was such a great guy."

He also was a heck of an athlete -- one still remembered by many for his contributions to the golden age of Abilene High athletics.

The most often cited of those contributions came as a speedy running back for the 1954 football squad, which started a streak of three consecutive state titles and 49 straight victories under coach Chuck Moser. The latter was Texas high school state record until Celina broke it with 68 consecutive victories from 1998-2002, and AHS stills shares the record for the longest big-school winning streak with Southlake Carroll.

But Millerman was a state champion before the '54 football season even began. The preceding spring, he and his cohorts led the Eagles to the state track title, igniting the run of success that would earn Millerman's class and the three that followed the distinction of Texas High School Football "Team of the Century" from the Dallas Morning News in 1999.

"(The track championship) kind of started the ball rolling," Millerman said in a 2014 interview with the Reporter-News.

Millerman, who would go on to play football and run track for Baylor, was a standout sprinter at AHS. During the Eagles' state championship season in '54, he ran the lead leg on the 440-yard relay team that won state with a time of 42.5 seconds -- the fastest in the nation that year by a high school team.

The following fall, he was the leading rusher for an Eagle team that won its final 10 games of the season, including a 14-7 victory over Houston Austin in the state final.

"I can remember how fast he was in high school," Hunt said. "I mean really, really fast."

Upon graduating high school in 1955, Millerman took his talents to Waco, where he played football until an autoimmune disease cut his career a couple of years in. He continued running track, however.

After college, he went into the insurance business, starting at the family firm Millerman & Millerman in Abilene. The firm was sold in 1992 and he moved to Dallas, where he lived the rest of his life.

"He was just a wonderful guy," said Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame Chairman Al Pickett, who got to know Millerman while working on the book, "Team of the Century: The Greatest High School Football Team in Texas."

"He was just a wonderful guy and great player," Pickett added. "He was just a super nice guy. That's the best thing I can say about him."

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