Israel Miller, of I. Miller & Sons, shoe manufacturers, died suddenly in Paris on Tuesday morning, of a heart attack, according to word received in New York. He was sixty-three years old. His wife, who was at his bedside, and five sons and a daughter, survive. His body will be brought to New York on the steamer Bremen for burial.
Israel Miller, born the son of a shoemaker in East Prussia, near the Polish border, retired three years ago from the management of I. Miller & Sons, an $8,000,000 company with sixteen retail shops in New York, 200 agencies throughout the United States, and two shoe factories.
He arrived in New York at the age of 24, having worked for four years as a cutter and designer in Paris. He obtained employment with John Azzimonti, then the leading manufacturer of stage shoes, where he worked at a cobbler’s bench in Union Square.
Mr. Miller was wont to attribute his success to a “lucky dollar” he found in Union Square. One morning in 1893, shortly after he had formed a partnership with a man who had been soliciting orders for custom shoes. Miller, who had no orders on hand and whose wife and four children were hungry, was walking along Union Square. He saw a $1 bill lying in the street. Picking it up, he hurried home and the family had a meal. When he got back to his shop, a man came in and ordered a pair of shoes. From then on orders came in, and as success came to him, Mr. Miller laid it to the $1 bill, which he called his lucky piece.
Large philanthropic gifts were made by Mr. Miller, in recent years, to the Beth Israel Hospital, the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies and the Jewish Educational Alliance.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
