June Ellen Miller

June Ellen Miller, who left farm life to become a nurse and mother of five, died Saturday, Aug. 26, 2023, at her assisted-living home in Lake in the Hills, Ill. She was 93.

Born May 24, 1930, to Harold and Hazel Morse, June grew up outside Dwight, Ill., on a farm where her father raised dairy cows and grew corn and soybeans. A photograph on the cover of "Farm Life" magazine in 1944 showed June, her sister and mother raising chickens during World War II.

She attended local schools, graduating in 1948 from Dwight Township High School. During her senior year, she was editor-in-chief of the yearbook.

After high school, she received a scholarship to enter a three-year nursing program at Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet, Ill., which she completed in 1952. While there, she met Victor Miller, a staff engineer at the headquarters of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway, across the road from the hospital.

They married in 1953 in Dwight and settled in an apartment on south Chicago Street in Joliet while they built a home in the Cherry Hill neighborhood, where they would live for more than 60 years.

She worked part-time at Silver Cross as her children matured and then studied to complete a college degree in nursing, which she received from Purdue University in 1980. Certified as a gerontological nurse practitioner, she worked several years as a field supervisor for a home health service and later as a supervisor at Sunny Hill Nursing Home.

June stopped working in her 60s and settled into retirement with her spouse. She socialized with friends, visited her children and grandchildren, and participated in church activities. One of her regular pleasures was going out for breakfast.

She was active for many years in Beta Sigma Phi sorority and her card club, whose members included other nurses. Over the years, she also served as a Cub Scout den mother and Cub pack secretary, developed a school crossing guard program for Cherry Hill School and took on various roles in the New Lenox School District Parent Teacher Organization while her children were students.

Her mother died in 1968; her father in 1992. A younger sister, Jeannine Hansen of Odell, Ill., died in 2009. After Victor’s death in 2020, June lived with a caregiver at her home before moving a year later to The Heathers, an assisted-living facility near the home of her youngest daughter.

Survivors include a brother, Harold Morse of Normal, Ill.; sons Gregory Miller, of Longwood, Florida, Kurt (Mary) Miller, of Batavia, Ill., and Kevin (Miloslava) Miller, of Naperville; daughters Sue (Steve) Osaki, of Huntington Beach, California, and Diana (Tim) Reincke, of Huntley. She was grandmother to Benjamin (Chelsea) and Molly Miller; Shane, Reed and Madeleine Osaki; Magdalena and Daniel Miller; and Nathaniel, Evan and Derek Reincke; and great-grandmother to Alannah Jefferson.

She and her husband were members of United Methodist Church of New Lenox, Ill.

Visitation is scheduled from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 1, 2023, at Kurtz Memorial Chapel, 102 E. Francis Road, New Lenox. A memorial service will follow from 11 to 11:45 a.m. Friday in the Methodist church sanctuary at 339 W. Haven Ave. Burial is planned at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, south of Joliet.