100 Years, More Than 350,000 Babies, and the One Who Started It All

Israel Bernard “Buddy” Miller, the first baby born at Huntsville Hospital and the inspiration behind HH Health’s “100 Years of Babies” logo, made his grand entrance on June 11, 1926 — just three days after the hospital opened its doors.

Buddy went on to become valedictorian of his high school, marry his first love, raise three children in the Blossomwood neighborhood, operate a successful scrap metal and welding business, and serve his hometown through leadership roles at Temple B’nai Sholom and numerous civic organizations. Buddy died on March 20, 2017, at age 91 due to complications of Parkinson’s disease. He is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery alongside his wife Dolores and his parents, Louis and Elsie Miller.

We spoke with Buddy’s son Sol Miller to learn more about his life, his legacy and the fascinating history of the Miller family.

Nurse uses AI-assisted stethoscope in heart screening

A Winning Hand

If anyone ever asked how he came to be the first baby born at Huntsville Hospital, Buddy Miller would answer that it was because his mother had played her cards right.

He was only half-joking.

Huntsville Hospital opened on June 8, 1926, boasting one of the first electric elevators in town and flashing lights to tell nurses when a patient needed assistance – the same system used by the famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota!

What the fancy new hospital did not have was a track record of delivering babies, so Elsie Ratner Miller, like most women of her era, was perfectly content to give birth at home in her own bed.

But first, there was a card game to be won.

On June 11, 1926, a noticeably pregnant Elsie went to a neighbor’s house on Eustis Avenue to play poker with some girlfriends. What happened next would become Miller family lore. Elsie began having contractions but was on a win streak and didn’t want to leave the card table. With her labor progressing quickly, someone called for an ambulance.

Elsie was rushed to Madison Street as Huntsville Hospital’s very first maternity patient. Dr. Duncan did the honors, delivering a healthy and handsome baby boy, Israel Bernard “Buddy” Miller.

In a sleepy mill town with just 13,000 residents, Buddy’s birth was front-page news. His arrival showed local families that the upstart hospital could be a safer and more comfortable place to bring a child into the world than a home delivery.

Certainly, Elsie started a trend: in the 100 years since, Huntsville Hospital, Huntsville Hospital for Women & Children and Madison Hospital have delivered nearly 360,000 babies.

Before Buddy: Louis Miller

While Buddy’s life began that day in June 1926, his story starts around 1913 when his father joined the exodus of eastern Europeans seeking a fresh start in America.

The young Jewish immigrant from Minsk, Russia, crossed the Atlantic in the belly of a German steamship, the Koenigen Luise. Not long after arriving in New York City, he decided to change his name.

Just like that, Label Mishkind became Louis Miller.

“He wanted to fit in as an American and thought he should have a less ethnic-sounding name,” Sol said.

Louis eventually made his way south to visit a brother who had settled in Tennessee. There, he learned of an opportunity at a Jewish-owned business across the state line.

Brothers Ike and Ben Denbo had founded the Tennessee Poultry & Hide Company in Decatur, making a decent living selling chickens, eggs, animal hides and furs, and scrap iron.

In 1917, Ike Denbo and his friend Jacob Bernstein decided to expand into Huntsville. Needing someone reliable to help run their new store, they offered the job to Louis after meeting him at the Lyons Hotel in Decatur.

Louis was sharp as a tack – he spoke Russian, Belarusian, Yiddish, Polish and German, and taught himself English by reading Jack London novels – and proved to be a natural salesman. When Ike Denbo joined the Army the following year and was shipped off to France, Louis acquired his share of the fledgling business on Washington Street.

“It was a popular place,” Sol said. “People would go there on Saturday mornings to buy a live chicken for their Sunday dinner.”

In 1924, Louis became a U.S. citizen in a naturalization ceremony at Huntsville’s federal courthouse. His business partner Jacob Bernstein died of colon cancer that same year, leaving behind a widow, Elsie, and their young daughter Hilda.

Finding Love, Fighting the KKK

Like Louis, Elsie was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. They moved in the same social circles and worshipped together at Temple B’nai Sholom, Huntsville’s only synagogue. It seemed natural that their friendship would eventually blossom into romance.

After marrying Elsie in 1925 and adopting Hilda, Louis had more reason than ever to make Tennessee Poultry & Hide Company a success.

But while the Millers were building a life in Huntsville, not everyone in town welcomed Jewish immigrants.

Arriving to open the shop one morning, Louis found a note from the Ku Klux Klan tacked to the door: “Get out of town,” it read.

“I was mad as hell,” Louis recalled years later. “I had traveled halfway around the world to find a place where I could live in freedom, and I’ll be damned if I was going to let those sons of bitches run me out of Huntsville.”

Standing just 5 feet 4 inches tall, Louis knew he would need more than muscle. He spent hours practicing at the shooting range next to his shop, eventually becoming a crack shot with both a pistol and rifle.

The KKK never bothered him again.

When the group disbanded a few years later, Louis bought their abandoned robes “and turned the high-quality white cotton cloth into premium-grade wiping rags,” according to the Jewish Literary Journal.

Leaning On Their Faith

When the Depression hit, the Millers moved from Eustis Avenue to a cheaper rental house one block over on Randolph Avenue. Still, life was good. They weren’t wealthy but, thanks to Louis’ store, “always had plenty of chicken for dinner,” Sol joked.

In 1934, tragedy struck. Hilda, Elsie’s daughter from her first marriage and Buddy’s half-sister, fell into a diabetic coma and died suddenly. She was only 18 years old.

“My grandmother never got over that as you can imagine,” Sol said.

Faith was important to the Millers, and they leaned on their Temple B’nai Sholom family more than ever following Hilda’s death. Because the small congregation couldn’t afford to pay for a rabbi, congregants like Louis served as lay leaders and helped run the temple.

Buddy missed out on having a bar mitzvah – an important coming-of-age ceremony for 13-year-old Jewish boys – because there was no rabbi in town to conduct it.

Furthermore, his parents, determined to raise Buddy as an all-American kid, discouraged him from learning to read Hebrew or speak Yiddish.

“My grandfather was very self-conscious of his accent and didn’t want his son to have any hint of one,” Sol said. “But I think it was a wonderful accent – part eastern European, part Southern.”

Buddy Miller and his future wife Dolores Katz in 1945

Buddy Goes to Military School

With World War II raging overseas, Louis and Elsie felt their son, by now a teenager, needed to be prepared to serve. Midway through his junior year, they pulled Buddy out of Huntsville High and enrolled him at Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tenn.

Buddy excelled at Castle Heights, playing football and graduating as valedictorian in the Class of ’44. Eager to do his part for the war effort, he joined a Navy officer training program right out of high school and was ordered to report to the University of South Carolina.

There was a tight-knit brotherhood of Jewish scrap metal dealers across the South in those days, and Louis encouraged Buddy to call on Solomon Katz in Columbia, S.C.

After their initial meeting, Katz invited the young naval officer trainee over for dinner the following Friday night.

Buddy fell head over heels that evening for Katz’s 16-year-old daughter, Dolores. “He went back to his dormitory and told his friend, ‘I met the one tonight,’” Sol said.

Buddy was only in South Carolina for a short time before the Navy reassigned him to Howard College (now Samford University) and then Georgia Tech. The war ended in late 1945, and the Navy eventually released Buddy back to civilian life.

Through it all, he never stopped thinking about Dolores. They were married by a rabbi at Atlanta’s Biltmore Hotel in February 1947 and moved to Huntsville a year later so Buddy could join the family business.

No Future in Animal Hides

As a freshly minted college graduate with a degree in industrial management, Buddy knew there was no future in selling animal hides and live chickens. With Louis’ blessing, he decided to pivot the business entirely toward scrap metal and welding equipment.

In 1948, Tennessee Poultry & Hide Company was officially renamed L. Miller & Son.

That July, Buddy and Dolores welcomed their first child, a daughter named Joy. Sol – named for his maternal grandfather, Solomon Katz – came along in 1955, followed by Sara in 1957.

Naturally, all three Miller children were born at Huntsville Hospital.

When Dolores came into an inheritance upon her father’s death, she and Buddy used it to build their dream house on Fraser Boulevard (now Fraser Avenue) in the Blossomwood neighborhood.

“It was a very good home to grow up in,” Sol said. “My parents were wonderful people – just delightful – and there was peace in the home. I was very lucky.”

Buddy loved to socialize and was naturally drawn to Huntsville’s many civic organizations. He joined the Rotary Club, the Jaycees and the Masons; he also served as president of Temple B’nai Sholom.

“He was constantly in meetings,” Sol said. “It got to the point that my mother was probably a bit frustrated.”

At Buddy’s urging, Louis agreed to move L. Miller & Son out of downtown to a larger parcel on Triana Boulevard in west Huntsville. The company, now named LMS Metal Sales, still operates there today under Sol’s leadership.

“What we do now with metals is still related to what my grandfather did a hundred years ago,” he said.

Buddy Gets His Bar Mitzvah

Louis, the patriarch of the Miller family and vanquisher of the KKK, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Huntsville Hospital on July 18, 1966. Elsie followed him two years later after succumbing to colon cancer – the same illness that had taken her first husband, Jacob Bernstein.

For his 65th birthday in 1991, Buddy decided to give himself a present he had wanted for half a century: the bar mitzvah he had been denied as a teenager. Sol agreed to teach his father how to read from the Torah in Hebrew – a requirement for the ceremony.

“We worked every morning for an hour or so, for months and months,” Sol said. “At his age, it was very difficult. But he had such a yearning to do it, and the bar mitzvah turned out to be one of the happiest, sweetest occasions of his life.”

One First to Another

Throughout his long life, Buddy was keenly aware of his unique status. Decades after becoming Huntsville Hospital’s first baby, he still felt connected to the place where his story began.

When Madison Hospital welcomed its first baby Paige Harper McLemore in June 2012, Buddy, then 86, wrote the child a letter — one first to another.

“You are at the beginning of what I hope will be a long life full of health, happiness, contentment and success,” Buddy wrote. “I pray that you always enjoy the love of your parents and family, that you are esteemed by many friends and your community, and that you always return that love and esteem.”