ODESSA, Del. (AP) - It looks like the first family won’t be the only touch of Delaware in the White House this year. A man from Odessa has been selected as a White House volunteer decorator for the 2022 holiday season.
From a pool of thousands of applicants from around the country, Dover’s Brian Miller, an associate curator at the Historic Odessa Foundation, is one of 100 volunteers selected to decorate the People’s House during the week of Thanksgiving.
Miller applied to be a volunteer decorator last year but was not selected. He then heard of others who applied multiple times and were later chosen. With encouragement from his wife, he decided to give it another go this year.
The second time really is the charm. While watching TV with his wife one recent evening, Miller got the official email that he would be on his way to the White House for the holiday.
‘It’s an amazing honor’
“As I’ve been telling everyone, I was absolutely speechless,” said Miller of his selection. “It is an amazing honor and I am very surprised. I’ve only been speechless three other times in my life - when my wife walked down the aisle and when my two kids were born,″ he confided.
This tradition began with President Benjamin Harrison and his family in 1889 and has been uninterrupted since the Hoover administration.
At the time of his interview, Miller did not yet know this year’s theme for the People’s House, but said he was “happy to do anything” asked of him and was excited to meet the other volunteers.
Embarking on this task as a fellow Delawarean in the first family’s home further heightens his awe of this experience, especially after having seen the Bidens around the state over the years, he said.
What’s on Brian Miller’s résumé?
After retiring from a 30-year teaching career, Miller began his tenure with the Historic Odessa Foundation in 1991 as a docent before joining the museum as a curator upon its opening.
Since then, he has spent the past 17 years lecturing, guiding docents, planning and developing exhibits, dabbling in photography and putting on showcases in some of the houses at the Historic Odessa Foundation.
Every year, Miller chooses a work of classic children’s literature to interpret in one of Historic Odessa’s museum homes. Miller recently opened his interpretive holiday exhibit that celebrates Charles Dickens’s classic novel “Oliver Twist” through a series of vignettes and selected scenes.
Now being a White House volunteer decorator, he was thrilled to flex that same muscle of creativity as he embarked on a multitude of official decorative tasks.
“It’s about the first family and supporting our nation and being able to contribute in a small way,” Miller said. “It’s just so high quality from what I’ve seen in the past. I always say it looks as though the mantles are drooping. It’s so beautiful, so tastefully done. Just so classic.”