Nearly four decades after straying from teaching to politics, Gov. Zell Miller is returning to the classroom to inspire a new generation of UGA students--many of whom are attending the University on the HOPE Scholarship he created.

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hose who were there when Gov. Zell Miller accepted an invitation to join the UGA faculty will remember it as a special moment in University history. And no one was more moved by the July 29 ceremonies at the Chapel than the governor himself, who was once a graduate teaching assistant here before straying from education to politics.

When his term as governor ends, Miller (AB '57, MA '58) will return to his alma mater as a Distinguished Professor of Higher Education and the first holder of the Philip H. Alston Jr. Chair, which was created by a $1 million gift from Elkin Goddard Alston in honor of her late husband.

President Michael Adams opened the ceremonies by introducing Mrs. Alston's son, John G. "Jimmy" Alston, who spoke of the qualities exhibited by Zell Miller that were also admired in his father, a prominent Atlanta business and civic leader who died in 1988: honesty, fairness, loyalty, good judgment, and strong leadership. Looking out on a standing-room-only audience of faculty, staff, and a sizeable contingent of students, Alston recalled Zell Miller as he first knew him many years ago--as a teacher. "He was the most memorable professor I had at Young Harris or the University of Georgia," said Alston.

Nearly four decades later, Miller has returned to the path he started on as a young man. The "education governor"--creator of the HOPE Scholarship and the man Governing magazine rated as one of the six best American governors of the Nineties--will return to a UGA classroom in fall 1999. His goal is to inspire a new generation of UGA students--many of whom are recipients of the HOPE Scholarship he created.

Greeted by an ovation that lasted nearly a minute, Miller stepped to the podium and described his new position as a distinguished professor as "a dream that I have had for a long, long time--a dream, in many ways in my mind, that was more unreachable than being governor."

reams were about all Zell Miller had when he arrived at the University in 1956. Freshly discharged from the Marine Corps and still wearing military-issue shoes, socks, and underwear, the 24-year-old Miller drove into Athens in an old Chevy with his very pregnant wife, Shirley, and a baby in diapers.

Their new home was in a pre-fab building (since torn down) on Ag Hill and he recalls being so tired from lugging their belongings up the flight of stairs to the second floor apartment that the family spent the first night on a mattress on the floor. Just days later, his second son was born in St. Mary's Hospital.

As with many episodes in Miller's life, there is a story connected to that August day.

"I was eaten up with politics, fascinated by it," he recalls, "especially Southern orators. Frank Clement, who was known as the 'boy governor' of Tennessee, was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention that summer. The speech was to be at 8 p.m. and I couldn't wait to watch it on our little black-and-white TV."

At 4 p.m. that day, as luck would have it, Shirley went into labor. Miller paced the hospital waiting room watching anxiously as the clock ticked past 5, 6, and 7 p.m. "Finally, I couldn't stand it and I slipped back to the apartment to watch the speech," he says. "When I got back to the hospital, Matthew had been born.

"Years later," he adds, "I met Frank's son, Bob, who'd become a Congressman. I told him I remembered his father giving that speech, but he was especially surprised that I could name the date: Aug. 13, 1956."

Miller completed his A.B. in History in 1957.

ven in his wildest dreams, Zell Miller may not have imagined himself delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. But on July 13, 1992, he was the man in the spotlight, invited to the podium by Bill Clinton, another Southern governor from humble roots. Political reporter Richard Hyatt writes in his biography of Miller that one factor in that invitation was that Don Fowler, then-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had heard Miller deliver the Commencement address at the University of Georgia when his daughter graduated the previous month. Miller's Commencement address had focused on the Rodney King trial and the riots that followed, and Fowler told convention organizers that Miller's was the finest speech on the race issue he'd ever heard.

Miller was in his hometown of Young Harris when Clinton called to ask his longtime friend and supporter to be the keynoter. And Young Harris figured prominently in the personal saga Miller shared with a nationwide audience from the convention stage in New York City. It was a rousing speech, a vintage stemwinder that put Miller right up there with the legendary orators he'd studied and admired--a speech about hope, the American Dream, and his mother, Birdie Miller.

Miller will teach both undergraduate and graduate students, and has committed to a Freshman Seminar in fall 1999. Here, senior Jennifer Hanson, a 4.0 student from Fayetteville, thanks the governor.

ell Miller was only two weeks old when his father, Grady Miller, a beloved teacher and dean of students at Young Harris College, suddenly passed out before one of his history classes. Three days later, he died of cerebral meningitis. Birdie Miller was left with two small children and little else. People assumed she would return to her family in South Carolina, but instead she chose to stay in Young Harris.

For $198, she bought a plot of land as close to the campus as she could find and drew simple plans for a house. Throughout the spring and summer of 1932, she hauled rocks from a nearby creek for the face of the house. She ran out of money to pay the builders after there was a roof, windows, and one finished room. The future governor of Georgia was a senior in high school before the house had running water and an indoor toilet.

Birdie Miller's rock house is still standing in Young Harris and it is the place her son still calls home, the place from which all roads lead and return. Like his father before him, Miller will become a faculty member at Young Harris College, in addition to his appointment at UGA, after his term of office ends in January. He also will be a Presidential Distinguished Fellow in History and Political Science at Emory, teaching an undergraduate seminar in the spring and giving an annual public lecture.

At UGA, Miller will join the faculty of the Institute of Higher Education, who are involved in analyzing and interpreting public policy issues affecting higher education. They also provide educational and professional development programs for administrators and faculty from institutions in the University System of Georgia and elsewhere. He also expects to spend time in the classroom with undergraduate and graduate students, and he has already committed to teaching a Freshman Seminar offered through the College of Arts and Sciences and the Honors Program. Other possibilities include team-teaching or guest lecturing in history and political science courses.

"[Acting provost] Tom Dyer has presented me with a wide range of options," says Miller. "Problem is, I want to do them all."

Miller's office will be in Meigs Hall, where he once took a philosophy course and a vantage point from which he can see the fourth floor window of the Academic Building where he once had an office as a graduate teaching assistant. "Five of us were in a room probably no bigger than 10 by 12," he recalls, "but we thought we were the stuff."

he original plan was for Miller to go to UGA to study law, but that changed when he took a first quarter Georgia history class with Dr. E. Merton Coulter. "I was so mesmerized by the way he could teach," Miller says. "I took every course he taught."

Inspired and encouraged by Coulter, who became his major professor, Miller went on for a master's degree after receiving his A.B. in history in 1957. He had begun work on his doctorate when a teaching position in history and political science opened at Young Harris. Again following in the footsteps of his father, who had earned bachelor's and master's degrees from UGA in the 1920s, Miller headed back home.

The young professor quickly proved to be as successful in the classroom as his mentor and his father had been. Hank Huckaby, who took Miller's American Government 101 class as a freshman in 1960, recalls his style. "He'd come into the classroom five minutes before it started and outline his lecture on the blackboard," says Huckaby, now director of UGA's Institute of Government. "He would start lecturing and cover everything on that board without using one note."

Miller didn't rely too much on textbooks either, preferring to draw lessons from the "real world" and to supply anecdotes from his own extensive reading.

As immersed in teaching as he was, Miller also felt a tug in another direction and went to Young Harris President Charles Clegg to ask for permission to run for the state senate. It was the same request Grady Miller had made of another Young Harris president 30 years before.

"I said, 'If you'll let me run and I get elected, I'll teach four courses a quarter and during the summer in order to get winter off,'" Miller remembers. "I think Charles Clegg thought, 'I'll let the young fellow get this out of his system so he can settle down and be a good history teacher.'"

So Miller ran and, with support from some of his students who volunteered as campaign workers, won a senate seat in the Georgia General Assembly by 151 votes. From 1960 on, he was never really out of politics, and the teacher eventually metamorphosed into a full-time elected official.

Miller served two terms in the state senate, was appointed to various state agencies and boards, was executive director of the state Democratic Party and executive secretary to Governor Lester Maddox before deciding to run for lieutenant governor in 1973. He won that race and held onto the post for a record 16 years. He hit his full political stride in 1990, when he was elected Georgia's 79th governor--the 23rd UGA graduate to earn that distinction.

Governing magazine named Miller one of the six best governors of the nineties. Education Week noted: "If there were a book about education governors, Mr. Miller might just be the main character." President Adams welcomed the governor to the faculty--and got him ready for football season--with a gift of a Bulldog cap and windbreaker.

iller's political career was not an unbroken string of successes. He failed in two tries to get elected to Congress and lost a particularly bitter runoff for a U.S. Senate seat to Herman Talmadge (who then lost to Republican Mack Mattingly) in 1980. Miller considers it the worst campaign he ever ran, so devastating that it nearly knocked him out of the political arena for good. It was at that low ebb that he received a note of encouragement from his then 89-year-old former professor, Dr. Coulter.

"He predicted I would make it to the governor's mansion someday," says Miller, who hung onto that piece of paper and a decade later proved Coulter right.

Miller got there by learning from his failures and by focusing on a strong theme for his gubernatorial administration: education. After winning support for a state lottery, he engineered a plan to dedicate the proceeds to two groundbreaking initiatives--the nation's only publicly financed pre-kindergarten program and the HOPE scholarship program, which pays full college tuition and fees at in-state public institutions for any Georgia student who graduates from high school with a B average and maintains it.

Those remarkable achievements are the legacy Miller leaves to the state--and the main reason he exits office at the end of his second term with a sky-high 77 percent approval rating and numerous plaudits from political observers and newspaper columnists.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Colin Campbell referred to Miller as "a person of substance in a field noted for shallow men." Education Week noted, "If there were a book about education governors, Mr. Miller might just be the main character."

Miller was still wearing military-issue shoes, socks, and underwear when he and wife Shirley arrived at UGA in '56. They had a baby in diapers, and Sirley was just days away from delivering their second son. Four decades later, they have stood on many a victory platform together.

During his eighth and final State of the State address to the General Assembly last January, Miller brought both Democrats and Republicans to their feet with a recap of his 37-year political career, interspersing his personal story with his legislative message.

"What we do here is vital to the daily lives of real children, real families, and real communities," Miller told the legislators. "The words contained in any bill translate into real lives. The numbers in any budget represent real people."

To make his point, Miller brought children from a pre-kindergarten program in Atlanta to the podium, then introduced the 300,000th HOPE scholar since the program began in 1993: University of Georgia student Lauren Stripling of Newnan.

nstage in the Chapel, President Michael Adams joked to his newly appointed distinguished professor that if he stopped to shake the hands of every HOPE scholar at UGA, he would never make it to class. Adams was hardly exaggerating. In recent freshmen classes, some 97 percent of in-state students have received HOPE scholarships.

Miller says he got the idea for HOPE from the G.I. bill that enabled him to go to UGA in the Fifties. "You give something, you get something--that's the premise of HOPE," he says.

In accepting the Alston chair, Miller eyed the group of incoming freshmen who had stopped by the Chapel during their orientation tour of campus, then expressed anxiety about how he will fare in today's classroom.

"I have never entered a political campaign with any fear, and I've never entered a session of the General Assembly without being absolutely sure of myself . . . but I worry, 'Do I really have knowledge worth dispensing? Can I really reach these students of the Nineties and touch their lives?' I pray that I still can."

To anyone who knows the professor turned politician turned professor again--the student of Georgia history who secured his own place in it--there's not much doubt.

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