In June, 2000, the first issue of the West Windsor-Plainsboro News appeared in the community, featuring on page one an iconic photo of more than a half dozen high school seniors, decked out in formal gowns and tuxedos, standing in front of a black limousine about to whisk them off to the high school prom.
The person who took the photo was Lynn Miller, the mother of one of the seniors, who was about to become the community editor of the new newspaper and the events editor of its sister paper, U.S. 1, and eventually the events editor of U.S. 1’s merged company, Community News Service.
Most people in the community quickly got to know Miller as the editor who recorded thousands of personal and group accomplishments along with the inevitable milestones — births, graduations, weddings, and deaths. Fewer people know that Miller was also a recognized authority in the world of cats. In the year 2000 she was also publishing her first book, “The Guide to Oriental Shorthairs,” and was an officer of Oriental Shorthairs of America, Westchester Cat Club, co-founder of the feline lymphoma support group, and âa member of the Cat Writers’ Association.
Now, 16 years later, Miller is stepping down from her day-to-day responsibilities at the WW-P News and Community News Service and focusing again on her feline friends. She plans to rewrite and update her 2000 guide to the Oriental shorthairs, a breed that is a cousin of the Siamese, and format it for Kindle. As much as she might miss knowing so much about so many in the community, Miller is looking forward to getting back to her guidebooks. “The cat stuff is very important.” She is now the president of Oriental Shorthairs of America, secretary of Westchester Cat Club, and treasurer of Cat Writers’ Association.
Even as a child growing up in New Rochelle, New York, Miller was a cat fancier. She recalls announcing to her parents that she “wanted to live in a cat house” when she grew up. Her parents asked her to repeat that wish to other adults — to all their great amusement.
Instead Miller earned a nursing degree from Pace College and another degree in behavioral science from Mercy College. She worked as a nurse from 1971 to 1982, quitting then to care for her newborn daughter, Rachel. The family moved to West Windsor in 1993, and Miller became active in the Girl Scouts, the band parents association, and working on the committee that paved the way for the consolidation of West Windsor’s many post offices into a single zip code.
Also serving on that committee was Bill Neff, who had founded the weekly West Windsor-Plainsboro News-Eagle. He recruited her to work on that paper. Shortly after the News-Eagle closed, she came to the then brand-new WW-P News.
Now free of the daily routine of tracking WW-P people and central New Jersey events, Miller spends some of her free time with her mother, Jean Goldberg, who writes for the monthly magazine at Monroe Village, and daughter, Rachel, who is now a stage manager on Broadway. (Rachel is married to Brian Davis, a member of the WW-P Class of 1998, whom she met in the Pirate marching band — she played flute and piccolo and he played tuba.)
Despite her life-long love of cats, Miller is currently living in a cat-less house. It’s been somewhat liberating. “For the first time I can go away and not worry about them,” she says.
