Home / Memorials
Memorials and Places to Visit
A memorial in Waco, a VA hospital, a stamp, schools and community centres in three states — and, so far as this site can establish, nothing at Pearl Harbor.
Bledsoe-Miller Park
300 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Waco, Texas 76704 — on the Brazos, near the Suspension Bridge.
Waco
The Doris Miller Memorial
The principal memorial stands on the bank of the Brazos River in Waco: a nine-foot bronze figure weighing some 700 pounds, set within a structure 170 feet long and 30 feet wide, built as two slanted walls shaped like the hull of a battleship. It was dedicated in December 2017.
The sculptor was Eddie Dixon of Lubbock. The figure stands about one and a half times life size. The site includes a reflecting pool and a wall of white triangular stone. At the eightieth anniversary ceremony on 7 December 2021, bronze reliefs depicting scenes from Miller’s life were unveiled; that ceremony began at 11:55 a.m. Central time, the moment of the attack. The project was driven by Cultural Arts of Waco under its president, Doreen Ravenscroft.
A commemoration is held at the memorial each 7 December.
Not verified
What this site could not establish about the memorial
The exact dedication date — every source consulted says only “December 2017.” The commonly repeated 7 December 2017 could not be confirmed. Also unverified: the cost, the donor list, and any statement of opening hours or accessibility. It is an unfenced outdoor installation in a public park, which implies open access, but no source consulted states hours or admission, and this site will not infer them.
The address given above is that of Bledsoe-Miller Park; the memorial structure itself sits on the riverbank and may have its own address. Waco Parks and Recreation can confirm.
The statue itself
In copyright. This site does not reproduce photographs of it — there is no freedom of panorama for sculpture in United States law.
A note on images
Why there is no photograph of the memorial here
Eddie Dixon’s 2017 sculpture is a copyrighted artistic work. United States law provides no freedom-of-panorama exception for sculpture — section 120 of the Copyright Act covers architectural works only. Photographing a copyrighted sculpture yourself creates no right to publish the photograph.
So this site describes the memorial and links to it, and reproduces none of it. The same reasoning applies to the 2010 stamp design below. Both decisions are deliberate, and both are recorded on the Image Credits page.
Public Law 113-256
Approved 18 December 2014, from H.R. 4199 in the 113th Congress.
The strongest document
Doris Miller Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center
The VA facility at 4800 Memorial Drive, Waco, Texas was named for him by act of Congress. The statute is short, public, and quotes the Navy Cross citation language directly — which makes it the most accessible primary document naming Miller that anyone can read online in ten seconds.
Of all the honours listed on this page, this is the one with the cleanest paper trail: a bill, a public law, a date, and a text.
Correction
The Dorie Miller housing is in Queens, New York — not Chicago, as is often stated.
Named for him
Schools, centres and housing
| Place | Where | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Dorie Miller Cooperative Houses | Corona–East Elmhurst, Queens, New York | Built 1950–53. Six towers, 301 families; a rare racially integrated development of its period. Residents included Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Jimmy Heath and Clark Terry. |
| Doris Miller Community Center | 1020 Elm Ave., Waco, Texas | Reopened after renovation in July 2023. Gym, banquet room, computer lab, wellness centre. |
| Doris Miller Community Pool | Same address, Waco | Recently renovated. |
| Doris Miller Family YMCA | 1020 Elm St., Waco | Hosted the stamp’s first-day-of-issue event in 2010. |
| Doris D. Miller Park | Waco, Texas | |
| Doris Miller Auditorium | 2300 Rosewood Avenue, Austin, Texas | Part of the Rosewood neighbourhood park complex. |
| Dorie Miller Community Center | San Antonio, Texas | Dedicated 1997; recognised by Texas House Resolution 1138. |
| Dorie Miller Elementary School | San Antonio, Texas | Opened 1947 as W. W. White School No. 2, later renamed. Status uncertain — the district page describes it as open, but 2024 reporting listed it among schools closed that May. Verify before visiting. |
A building or facility named for Miller at Naval Station Great Lakes is sometimes mentioned. This site could find no official Navy source for one and does not list it.
Scott catalogue
Numbers 4440–4443 appear on dealer sites; this site has not confirmed them against an official source.
2010
The Distinguished Sailors stamps
Issued 4 February 2010, first-day city Washington, D.C.; a 44-cent commemorative in panes of twenty, four designs. The four sailors are William S. Sims, Arleigh A. Burke, John McCloy and Doris Miller — a set often misremembered, so worth stating plainly.
Art director and designer: Phil Jordan of Falls Church, Virginia. Printed by Avery Dennison in photogravure; twenty-five million printed. The designs are based on photographs rather than paintings, and the pane identifies each sailor, the approximate date of his photograph, and a ship named in his honour. Miller’s stamp uses a 1942 photograph of him and shows the crest of the destroyer escort USS Miller (DE-1091).
A first-day-of-issue event was held in Waco on 5 February 2010 at the Doris Miller branch of the YMCA, with Representative Chet Edwards giving the keynote.
The stamp design is under USPS copyright — postal designs have not been public domain since 1978 — so it is described here rather than reproduced.
A documented absence
Reporting what is not there is as much a part of the record as reporting what is.
Pearl Harbor
What is not there
This site could locate no monument, plaque, marker or permanent exhibit dedicated to Doris Miller at Pearl Harbor National Memorial, at the USS Arizona Memorial, or on Ford Island.
The National Park Service’s own page profiling individuals of the attack lists Bennion, Crossett, J. B. Miller, Callahan, Aaron, Goodyear, Augerson, Ross, Seelie and Krafnick. Doris Miller is not among them. Nor does he appear in the park’s history and culture index.
What did happen at Pearl Harbor was an event rather than a memorial: the naming ceremony for the future USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), held there on 20 January 2020.
He is very likely commemorated on the Tablets of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, as a man lost at sea and never recovered. This site could not confirm that listing and does not assert it.
A trap for researchers
A different Doris Miller
The National Park Service publishes an oral history interview with a Doris Miller who was Bess Truman’s beautician in Independence, Missouri, recorded in December 1985 for the Harry S Truman National Historic Site. It has nothing whatever to do with the sailor. It surfaces high in searches and has found its way into citation lists elsewhere. It is noted here so it does not find its way into yours.
Rights
Baylor requires prior written consent to reproduce items from the archive. Link, do not copy.
The archive
The Doris Miller Archive, Baylor University
The Texas Collection at Baylor holds the Doris Miller Archive: correspondence, news clippings, brochures, photographs, publications and government documents covering his Waco childhood, his naval service, his death, and the commemoration that followed — including the VA renaming and the building of the Waco memorial. It draws on multiple collections within The Texas Collection, University Archives, and the Baylor Collections of Political Materials at the W. R. Poage Library.
It is browsable online. High-resolution images require an email request. Some items are access-restricted on copyright grounds, and Baylor’s terms require prior written consent for commercial reproduction — which is why this site links to the archive and reproduces nothing from it.
Anyone researching Miller seriously should start there, and with his official military personnel file in Record Group 24 at the National Archives in St. Louis. Between them they hold the answers to most of what this site has had to mark as unverified.
Sources
- City of Waco Parks and Recreation, Doris Miller Memorial; Doris Miller Community Center; Doris Miller Community Pool.
- KERA News, coverage of the 80th anniversary ceremony, 7 December 2021.
- Austin Chronicle, “Day Trips: Doris Miller Memorial, Waco,” 11 November 2022.
- Public Law 113-256, 18 December 2014 (from H.R. 4199, 113th Congress). GovInfo.
- Department of Veterans Affairs, Central Texas Health Care, Doris Miller VA Medical Center; VA History Office.
- Historic Districts Council, Dorie Miller Cooperative Houses.
- Texas House Resolution 1138, 75th Legislature, 27 May 1997.
- San Antonio Independent School District, Dorie Miller Elementary School.
- City of Austin Parks and Recreation, Rosewood complex.
- USPS Stamp Announcement 10-05, Postal Bulletin; USPS Texas news release, 2010; Smithsonian National Postal Museum object record.
- National Park Service, Pearl Harbor National Memorial — People, and History & Culture index.
- U.S. Navy press release, 20 January 2020.
- Baylor University Digital Collections, The Texas Collection, Doris Miller Archive.
- 17 U.S.C. §120, on the architectural-works exception.
The memorial’s cost, donor list, exact dedication date and opening hours are all unverified and marked as such above. The Honolulu Memorial listing is unconfirmed. Editorial policy · Report an error
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