Our smart, funny and sometimes quite-stubborn father, Danny Miller, died Feb. 18, 2019, at home in Altoona, Fla., at age 77. He had been living with Parkinson's disease and MDS, a rare bone marrow failure disorder.

Daniel C. Miller was born in Pittsburgh, grew up in Huntington, W.Va., and lived most of his adult life in Florida. He was the son of the late George A. Jr. and Betty Eyman Miller.

He taught his South Florida girls how to fish and shoot and watch for alligators and how to open coconuts with a screwdriver. He let them climb trees and play in the "fog" from the mosquito-control trucks that drove through the neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale. He took them to Disney World and Pirates World and Ocean World. All of the Worlds. He made sure they learned to swim, though he didn't swim himself, because his adult brother and sister had both drowned. He'd take them to Fort Lauderdale Beach and Dania Beach, John Lloyd State Park and Birch State Park. A trip to Dairy Queen for a chocolate-dipped cone was sure to follow.

You might not catch him reading a book, but he would read a newspaper cover-to-cover, including the classifieds, and then pick up another. He'd quote the news he had read ALL DARN DAY. No wonder one of his daughters ended up becoming a journalist. He liked to write letters to the editor, under an assumed name. He used his real name to contact the places where he shopped or dined. When the Publix bakery stopped slicing his favorite breakfast bread — because, you know, nut allergies — he wrote to Publix asking them to reconsider. And they did. After that, he'd go to the bakery and ask an employee to slice his loaf and just wait for them to say "no" so he could whip out a well-folded letter from his wallet that said YES, you will slice this bread for Mr. Miller. So, if you have a nut allergy and you shopped at his Publix … we're so sorry!

He didn't have an easy life. Growing up, one leg was left crippled — they thought it was polio — but to hear him tell it, he "Forrest Gumped" his way out of metal leg braces by climbing flights of stairs in the office buildings that were on his paper routes in downtown Huntington, W.Va. Late in life, when he finally went to a doctor after living with lifelong headaches and neck pain, the doctor asked him, "When did you fracture your neck?" It was a surprise, and a revelation, to him. He recalled the time he and his sister Patty were sledding and he hit a pole – right after she jumped off. And he remembered a collision between his bicycle and a delivery truck around that time when he was a boy. So, he said, maybe it wasn't polio after all.

That twisted foot and leg kept him out of the military, but he worked all his life, even though he could have collected disability. That just wasn't his style. He didn't work in an office, didn't sit at a desk. He learned to use a computer in his 60s, reconnecting with people and places from his past. (Email made writing his letters so much easier!) He spoke his mind, and if a boss told him "it's my way or the highway," as one boss did, he'd take the highway.

Over the years, he was a car salesman and a grocery manager. He was a milkman and a maintenance man. A lawn guy and a pool cleaner. He worked for South Florida's Everglades Flood Control in the 1970s. He liked to tell the story about the time the airboat broke down and he had to wade through the water keeping an eye out for water moccasins and alligators. He was an exterminator, drugstore stocker, painter (houses, not Picassos) and parks worker. In more recent years, he was a mobile home salesman, a campground host at Manatee Springs State Park, and a friendly breakfast "hostess" at a motel. At that job he got to stand around talking to the ladies. Did I mention he loved the ladies — and they loved him? But he died a bachelor.

He didn't care about owning "stuff"; the queen of decluttering, Marie Kondo, would have approved. But he believed in giving to others, and that included God. He tithed and volunteered in his community and at his church. In the 1980s, he kept a chauffeur's license current so he could drive a big yellow Sunday school bus for mentally and physically disabled adults at what was then the First Baptist Church of West Hollywood, Fla. He later attended Pine Grove Baptist in Trenton. He was a decades-long, multi-gallon blood donor.

There was a homeless man who lived in the woods behind a shopping center where he once worked. Dad literally gave that man the shirt off his back. If he had only three shirts, then he said he could spare one. If he was struggling and his daughters gave him cash, and by daughters that mostly means Cyndi, he'd give it to someone else. He went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and camped in a motor home while helping people in the Ninth Ward rebuild. In recent months, while living on Social Security-only, he gave to GoFundMe fundraisers for people he knew, and people he didn't. He even offered his shoes to his hospice nurse. He figured he didn't need them anymore.

He laughed a lot and told dad jokes. (Where did the Lone Ranger take his trash? **cue Lone Ranger music ** To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump, dump.) He drove a pickup truck with a Choose Life license plate. He loved Westerns (especially Clint Eastwood) and Dirty Harry. He supported the NRA until it took a stance allowing hunting of Florida's black bears, at which time Dad said, "They won't get another dime from me."

He liked his coffee from McDonald's and he'd tell you about the Kroc family if you'd let him. When he worked at South Florida's Sunrise Shopping Center, later called The Galleria, he met Ray Kroc, who told him he planned to build the world's largest (at the time) McDonald's there. And Kroc did. And that's how it came to be that from time to time, the head of the McDonald's empire and Danny the maintenance man would sit down over a cup of coffee or two.

He retired at 65 but continued painting and pressure cleaning into his 70s. Though he might have craved a cold PBR on a hot day, he was 40+ years sober. He swore off alcohol and never looked back when he was widowed at age 36 with two girls to raise.

He had four children, all girls. He is survived by daughters Kim Lewis Henson of West Virginia, Cyndi Hoxie and her husband, John, of Florida, Pam Webster and her husband, Jim, of Washington, D.C., and Jenifer Peddycord of Florida; a grandson; three granddaughters; a great-granddaughter; and half siblings David Sowards, Michele Miller Conley and Stacey Miller Sammons.

In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by wife Callie Powell Miller and siblings Richard and Patricia Miller; his childhood stepmother Bernice Holderby Miller; and stepsisters Eloise Douthat Phillips and Joan Douthat Cyrus.

He laughed and loved and was loved. We'll miss you, Danny Boy.

Baldwin Brothers is in charge of arrangements. No services are planned at this time. Thanks to Hospice of Marion County (Fla.).