HEAD ORDERLY AT HOSPITAL

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27592, 24 February 1955, Page 15

HEAD ORDERLY AT HOSPITAL

Retirement Of Mr W. A. Miller

RECOLLECTIONS OF 40

YEARS’ SERVICE An impressive record of family service at the Christchurch Hospital is being built up by Mr W. A. Miller, supervisor of orderlies, and two of his sons, Messrs N. G. Miller and A. Miller. Mr W. A. Miller will retire tomorrow after 40 years’ service at the hospital—3o of them in his present position—and Mr N. G. Miller, who has been there 12 years, will succeed him. Mr A. Miller has been on the staff for a year. There are people in Christchurch, now approaching middle age, who will remember Mr Miller, although they do not know him personally, for he has been Father Christmas at the hospital for 27 years, and this is a pleasant duty he intends to continue performing. Mr Miller has spent a working lifetime at the hospital, but he still regards himself as a blacksmith, and his tenure of office the result, more or less, of chance. In 1915 after being invalided out of the Army, he was outside the hospital waiting to go to Timaru to {date racehorses, when he was approached by a hospital orderly who asked him whether he wanted a job. Mr Miller said he did not, and the orderly told him wistfully that until he could get a relief, he could not go on his holidays. Finally, Mr Miller agreed to work at the hospital for 10 days while the orderly had a holiday. Then the supervisor asked him to stay a further 10 days to allow someone else a vacation. He has been there ever since. Hospital life has provided Mr Miller with many sunny moments, and some sad ones. He recalls the dark days after Ballantyne's fire, and the fire at the Silver Grid rooming house in Manchester street many years ago. Even as Father Christmas, when he brought so many children so much happiness, there were some pathetic moments—children asking for, and receiving, such things agfootballs, which, through their

illnesses or disablements, they would never be able to play with properly. Tribute to Hospital Staff | Mr Miller has a profound respect! for the nursing staffs he has known. “There have been Florence Nightingales 1 among them all,” he says. He also pays tribute to the honorary medical staff, and to others with whom he has worked closely—the police, St_ John Ambulance drivers, and many others. Mr Miller will continue to instruct incoming nurses, every three months, on fire precautions and drill. Forty years at the hospital have not seemed dull to Mr Miller, for there was infinite variety in his work. Once he had to chase an escaped mental patient from the hospital grounds to a coalhouse in an Addington back yard before he caught him. He remembers one orderly, a huge man whose boast it was that nothing upset or frightened him. Nothing did. until Mr Miller, with a sheet over his head, came upon this hero round a corridor corner at 1 a.m. Mr Miller still hears and sees his colleague’s precipitate retreat. Only once has Mr Miller been one of the patients he has helped attend for so long. He was working at a kitchen window when someone took away the ladder from under him, and he woke up in a ward hours later, with leg and head injuries. He was back on duty in four days. Changes at Hospital There have been some great changes in the hospital since Mr Miller began working there, 72 hours a week for 255. He has worked under four medical superintendents—Dr. Francis Scott, the late Dr. Walter Fox, Dr. A. D. Nelson, and D. T. Morton—and three lady superintendents—Miss Rose Muir,

Miss G. Widdowson, and Mrs M. Chambers. When he began, there were only nine of the present 16 wards, and the X-ray department was a one-man job. Today nearly all the spaces and yards he knew are taken up with new builds ings and departments. Once there was a sit-down strike by four orderlies, who were dismissed, and left only two to carry on for four days before they were reinforced. Mr Miller intends to devote some time to his outside interests, duck shooting and fishing, but he says he will always be prepared to help the board if he is required. His life at the hospital has been, he says, a wonderful experience, and one he is never likely to forget. The hospital will not easily forget Mr Miller. At a meeting of the Hospital Board yesterday, the secretary (Mr A. Prentice) said that "Old Bill” had been a lovable Bairnsfather character in the First World War. Mr Miller, he said, was the “Old Bill” of the hospital.