World War II veteran from Avella area remembered on Memorial Day

AVELLA – Veterans who fought and died in combat were remembered across America Monday, and Orrin Guy Miller was one of them.

Miller was raised on a farm in Jefferson Township, and he died over Hungary on July 24, 1944, just one month after his 26th birthday. Miller was on a bombing mission targeting a steelworks and was classified as missing in action for a year and a day before being officially declared dead. His remains were later found and interred in Gettysburg National Cemetery.

A display honoring Miller was set up at the old train station in Avella on Monday morning. The building now houses the A.D. White Research Society, a group named for an educator and historian of the northern Washington County area. His son, Willard White, is now the organization’s president. He explained that they decided to host the event when they found out there would not be an official Memorial Day commemoration in Avella this year.

“We’d been open during those events a couple of times,” White explained. “We decided we would go ahead with our open house.”

White said they hope to make it a Memorial Day tradition and would like to get additional information on fallen service members from Avella and the surrounding area for future commemorations.

Remembering Miller was one of the activities the A.D. White Research Society is undertaking as it shakes off a period of dormancy caused by COVID-19. The train station is bursting with files on local families and history, and the organization would like to digitize a lot of it. It also has hours of cassettes of White’s father talking about local people, landmarks and events. They were recorded a few years before the elder White died in 1994, just a few months shy of his 100th birthday.

Terry Wiegmann, who lives in Carroll, Ohio, a village just south of Columbus, frequently travels to Avella to do volunteer work for the A.D. White Research Society. She explained that her roots are in the Avella area.

“My DNA is here,” Wiegmann said. “It’s important to me.”