Inventor leaves $1 million to college

Les Miller was a Silicon Valley inventor who never married, had no intentions of retiring and rarely took time off to travel.

When he died this spring at age 59, he didn’t leave his fortune to family or the University of California-Berkeley, where he earned his master’s in electrical engineering.

Instead, he bequeathed $1 million to his other alma mater: a community college set in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Officials say it’s the single largest donation in the college’s history and the largest estate donation to any community college in the region. The gift was announced last month in honor of the college’s 70th anniversary.

Sierra College Foundation Executive Director Sonbol Aliabadi said the college will spend the money to improve the department of technology and science – two of Mr. Miller’s passions. He earned his associate’s degree there in 1966.

“It’s a very mixed feeling,” she said. “At first you’re trying to deal with the sense of loss and extend that. But then, you’re screaming for joy.”

Mr. Miller lived in San Jose, Milpitas and Santa Clara for most of his adult life, until he died of Parkinson’s disease March 31.

Brent Miller, 65, who lives in Bishop, said his brother had saved more than $1 million mostly from his 401(k) and stock options with Spectra Physics in Mountain View, a commercial laser company where he worked from 1972 to 1993. There, Mr. Miller invented many tools and gadgets, his brother said, including a dual-piston pump that produced tiny amounts of liquid at a constant rate of speed.

Mr. Miller left “nice gifts” to his brother and good friend Bob Jacobs, as well as $50,000 each to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation in New York and the Parkinson’s Institute in Sunnyvale. The lion’s share went to the community college.

“I was a little surprised by the donation,” said Jacobs, whom Mr. Miller hired at Spectra Physics and who remained a friend for life. “I guess I didn’t realize how much he valued that education that he got.”

Mr. Miller and Jacobs, who now works at Intel in Folsom, solved engineering problems together during the day. In their free time, they helped each other on construction projects, such as a nearly 4,000-square-foot home Mr. Miller built in the Milpitas hills. Once, in 1978, the two traveled to Hawaii. Jacobs now wonders whether it was Mr. Miller’s only vacation.

Mr. Miller had no children. His brother said he wasn’t hurt that Mr. Miller didn’t leave him more.

“His reasoning, and I think it made a lot of sense, was that Berkeley gets good-size donations, and he figured Sierra didn’t get much of that,” said Brent Miller, a retired Silicon Valley computer engineer. “It wasn’t a huge thing for me and my wife. We’re fairly comfortable. I think he expected us to be horrified.”

The two Miller boys were born to Wallace and Francis Miller, who owned a coin laundry in Auburn. Neither boy was interested in sports. And Les focused on science and engineering early. He was an amateur radio bug, tinkered with broken machines in the laundry and helped his dad build a screen porch.

“Once, he flipped off a ladder and hurt his head,” Brent Miller said, remembering when his brother was building the porch. “That was Les. Really enthusiastic, wanting to help. And getting carried away.”

Mr. Miller was quiet and had a dry sense of humor, attributes that were coupled with an inventor’s mind. He baked Christmas cakes in the shape of wreaths. And his family loves to talk about the sensor he created for his cat’s collar. It allowed Ziggy to enter the cat door, but blocked stray cats from entering.

After Mr. Miller received his Parkinson’s diagnosis in his late 40s, he had to retire and move from his spacious Milpitas home in 1998 to a smaller three-bedroom Santa Clara home, and finally, in 2002, to a San Jose residential care facility. His brother tried to encourage Mr. Miller to make the most of his time off, spending it on hobbies, such as cooking, woodworking or photography.

But Mr. Miller wasn’t happy about the time off.

“At least you get to retire early,” Brent Miller said.

His brother responded: “Well, I was never planning on retiring.”