Dolores Anne (Hock) Miller

MILLER, Dolores A. (Hock). Of Dorchester, Savin Hill, died peacefully at home surrounded by her loving family, July 12, 2019.

Born and raised in Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York, on October 1, 1923, Dolores moved with her husband and children to Savin Hill in Boston in 1957. She led a long life of active community engagement. She volunteered for St. William's Band in the CYO and for the Kidney Foundation for many years. She taught cooking classes to girls and boys at the neighborhood Little House. She was actively involved in the Columbia Savin Hill Civic Association and served on the Dorchester Arts Council. Under Governor Michael Dukakis she served on the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities now known as the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She traveled in 1991 with Governor Weld as part of the first official delegation of the Massachusetts Hokkaido Sister State Association to Sapporo, Japan.

She advocated and worked to bring UMass Boston and the Kennedy library to the Columbia Point peninsula in Dorchester. She inspired and mentored the late Carole Remick in founding the New England High School Journalism Collaborative, whose longtime mission has been "to reach out to inner-city students and others in under-served communities to introduce them to careers in journalism and to help establish student newspapers in high schools throughout New England." Dolores served on the board at Kit Clark Senior Services and was involved with Dorchester Federated Houses and Neighborhood Housing Services. Taking up quilting in her retirement years, she was a long-time member of the Kit Clark quilting class, which sewed quilts for the AIDS Baby Quilt Project. She was on the Holy Trinity German Church Parish Council, sang in both its German and Latin Tridentine choirs, and was actively involved in its Christian Arts Series bringing fine talent from Europe to the South End until the church's closure in 2008. A fervent supporter of community-based music, the arts, and education, she inspired and touched the lives of many musicians, artists, and educators. She worked for 19 years as the Administrative Assistant and later as the Assistant Director in the Office of Grants and Contracts at UMass Boston, bringing in many hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money, as she would say, "B.C. – before computers."

Beloved wife of the late Richard H. Miller, she is pre-deceased by her two brothers, Robert J. Hock of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Joseph T. Hock of Virginia Beach, Virginia. She is survived by her three daughters: Mary Ellen Miller and her husband John Pearsall of Belchertown, MA; Karen Miller Jackson and her husband Jeffery Jackson of Dorchester, MA; Doreen Miller of Dorchester, MA; by her son Robert Miller of Fairfield, IA; and by her granddaughter Heidi Moesinger of Dorchester, MA, as well as by many nieces and nephews.


Family and friends will honor and remember Dolores's life by gathering for visiting hours in the Murphy Funeral Home, 1020 Dorchester Ave., DORCHESTER, on Wednesday, July 17, from 4-8 P.M.

A Memorial Service will be held on Thursday, July 18, at 1 P.M. in the First Parish Church on Meetinghouse Hill, 10 Parish Street, Dorchester.

A private interment will take place in Blue Hill Cemetery, Braintree.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her memory to the Community Music School of Springfield, 127 State Street, Springfield, MA 01103.