8 Lessons From the Life of Keith Miles

I’ve been thinking a lot about the life of my grandpa, Keith Miles. As I started to write my thoughts about his life I realized that there were 8 main lessons that stood out to me about his life; 8 ways that he succeeded greater than any other man I’ve known. 

1. See the Beauty in Life!

 The first chapter of my grandpa’s life was defined by a passionate curiosity about life. He grew up on a cattle ranch and he had the opportunity to roam through the woods and experience nature in its untouched beauty. He loved plants, animals and birds. He once told me that as a boy there was a robin that would fly down and land on his shoulder. Aside from the cows and chickens and horses that were central to his family’s livelihood, he had many wild animals that he befriended. He would check in on those animals, spend hours observing them, and occasionally tended to them if they were hurt.

Years later he was known as “The Birdman of Eastern Oregon,” for the many colorful species of birds that he cared for. He always loved the natural beauty of the world, and never lost his sense of wonder.

2. Follow Your Interest, Passionately!

As the firstborn son, there was an expectation that he would stay and take over the ranch. My grandpa loved his family, but he was fascinated with plants and animals, and he left to study biology at Oregon State University. 

After college, he became a geneticist and produced his own breed of tulip. He was hired by a poultry farm and contributed to teams that bred different breeds of turkeys and chickens. As a young man, the natural world was his all-consuming passion. By pursuing his interest, he was able to gain a greater understanding of life, and contribute to developing it in new and innovative ways.

Years later, his passionate spiritual interest would send him much farther than he had ever gone before, and despite criticism and great personal risk, he followed that interest to its conclusion.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Start Over!

The turkey farm he had been working at shut down. He was out of work with kids to feed and ranching was what he knew. He had an offer for a research position in Seattle, but he wanted to go back to his roots and put his family first. He wanted to be near his parents and siblings. Sometimes, you have choose what’s really important to you, even if it means starting over. We all have a season in the mud, when it feels like we’re stuck, not making any progress, trapped by life circumstances. As much as he loved being close to his family, to go from being a respected turkey geneticist back to ranching must have felt that way for him. That was until he became a Christian. He came home from church one Sunday after hearing a missionary speak and he told his wife Anita, “I’m going to be a missionary!”

By the 1970’s his passionate interest in biology had led him all the way to its source, the creator. The same passion that had driven him to leave Baker City to understand life now compelled him to leave the United States to share his discovery. He wanted to share the purpose and fulfillment he had found in the Bible, which led him and his family to the island of Halmahera in Indonesia. Giving up his ranch to become a missionary was not a popular move with his family. It required serious determination for Keith to set out on what his parents considered, “a harebrained scheme.” Keith and Anita became missionaries with New Tribes Missions and were sent to minister to the Tugutil people in the village of Lili. The tribe had no written language, and there were no outsiders that spoke the language yet, so there was no way for Keith & Anita to learn the language, except to live there and slowly piece it together. Talk about starting over!

4. Be Patient!

This was when my grandparents became professional linguists. There was no way for them to learn the Tugutil language, except the hard way, by figuring it out themselves. They developed a fascination with language and spent over a decade deciphering the spoken language, learning it fluently and writing it down. Along with their partners, they were the first to ever write down the Tugutil language. 

According to my grandma, it came easy for Kieth. His passion and enthusiasm coupled with his sharp intellect and prior education made it easy for him to memorize and make linguistic connections. He was in love with his work and that love enabled him to take on seemingly impossible tasks. 

It took him a decade to decipher the language and write it down, and two more decades to completely translate the entire bible, Old & New Testament into the written language that he had created for the Tugutil people. 

5. Finish 1 Major Life Work!

The greatest accomplishment of my grandpa’s life is the Tugutil Bible. It represents 40 years of focus, determination, and work towards a single goal. Many of my aunts, uncles and cousins own a copy, not just for religious reasons, but because of what it represents. It is a colossus of an achievement. It is a pyramid. A cathedral. It is the life work of a man that relentlessly pursued a vision. He first landed on the island of Halmahera when he was 40 years old. When the Tugutil bible was finally finished, my grandpa was 80 years old. 

I have had my fair share of difficult projects, many of which took more than one year to realize the vision. I still cannot comprehend the single minded focus of The Tugutil Bible, which took 40 years. 

I believe everyone should aspire to complete 1 major life work. Something tangible. Measurable. Something you can see. It could be a business that you expand to 4 locations. A family home. A series of creations. A community of people you’ve helped. For my father-in-law it is all of the buildings in Portland that he built. What I love about the Tugutil bible is that you can hold it in your hands and flip through the pages. It is solid and real. For my grandpa it made the entire journey worth it. 

6. Love Your Wife!

As I’ve talked about my grandpa’s relentless focus and determination you may have got the idea that he was a “workaholic” and a difficult man to be married to. He was complicated, as we all are, but he adored his wife. Sadly, today he has dementia. He no longer remembers who many of us are. But he still goes out every morning, works in his garden, and picks flowers for his wife. It’s habitual. He’s been picking flowers for her his whole life.  

My grandma is an interesting woman. She is clever and attentive to detail. While my grandpa thinks in large brush strokes she sees the finer points in everything. When they translated the bible into Tugutil they worked as a team. My grandpa would translate from English into Tugutil and then my grandma would translate back from Tugutil into English. 

The problem was that my grandpa was too enthusiastic. He would embellish and add his own flair. He would get excited about a particular verse’s message and he would accidentally add his own exclamation points. His passion would leak through. It was my grandma’s job to be quality control. She had to maintain the accuracy of the original. 

She was his editor, which must have resulted in thousands of disagreements. But they always worked through it. The Tugutil Bible is not just proof of their persistence in that goal, it is also proof of their persistence in marriage. 

My grandpa loves her more than anything. My entire life I watched him dote on her and give her affection. He never cared where we were. He was in love with her everyday, everywhere we went. When I was struggling with a relationship in my early 20’s he talked to me about how important it is to always put your wife and family first. 

Keith was a lover. He loved plants, animals, and life. But most of all, he loved his wife. 

7. Leave a Legacy!

My grandparents legacy is their family. They had 5 kids and each of those kids had 2 or 3 kids. Many of those grandchildren have had children. Their marriage has resulted in a legacy of over 50 people, and they have always been available to their family, whether they are flying to Texas to see their two kids that live there or hosting kids and grandkids at their house in Eastern Oregon. 

Especially in the years since their retirement, we spent every Christmas at their house. We went with them out to the Miles family Christmas party at the ranch. We would visit in the summer. Their legacy wasn’t just the fact that all of us kids and grandkids exist. They actually have a relationship with each of their grandkids. 

For my part, I see many of the things I do as a continuation of his legacy. I try to impact people as a teacher and help them discover their interest and pursue it to the best of their ability. I want my students to have the passion and enthusiasm of Keith Miles. I try to model that passion and enthusiasm. As a football coach I try to train my players to never give up and to persevere through difficulty. I want them to have the persistence and determination of Keith Miles, and I try to model those traits as well. 

My grandpa’s legacy lives on through my aunt’s, uncles, and cousins. In each of them I can see a different side of him. My cousin Cory cares deeply for people and works as a firefighter and paramedic. My cousin Anna Mae works with horses and loves animals. My sister is a book editor and loves language and words. There is a piece of him in each of us, and I’m certainly proud of the piece I got.

Among his many talents, besides being a geneticist, linguist, and missionary, my grandpa was also a poet. Throughout his life, he wrote poems full of meaning to the people in his life that he cared for. He wrote poems for his wife, his kids and his grandkids. Looking through copies of his poems I can see a connection to my own style of writing. I can see his influence on my words, and I’m proud to continue that aspect of his legacy. 

8. Live Simply!

My grandparents never needed much. To say they weren’t materialistic would be an understatement. They couldn’t have cared less about possessions. In Lili they lived in a hut by the river. They had no electricity and no indoor plumbing. They cooked on a gas stove and boiled water to drink. They survived on bare essentials such as fish, rice, roots, and bananas. No restaurants in Lili. They were able to get chickens for eggs and they looked forward to trading with the weekly ship that would come through. 

They lived a pioneer’s life, surviving for 30 years in the jungle on the bare essentials. No extras. They didn’t need them. When they retired and moved back to Eastern Oregon they lived the same minimalist lifestyle. They bought a small house with a garden and lived a peaceful existence. What always surprised me about visiting my grandparents is that you couldn’t tell by walking around their house that they had lived in the jungle for 30 years. Their decoration was minimal and aside from my grandpa’s office, there was no evidence at all that they had been missionaries in Indonesia. 

My grandparents lived a very interesting life, but through it all, they stayed humble and they stayed minimal. They were happy with the basics and they never needed anything but family to have a good time. 

Keith Miles never had the goal of fame or wealth or glory. To my eyes, it seemed like he was driven by passion and purpose. He fell in love with plants and animals from a young age, leading to his interest in biology and his obsession with turkeys and tulips. Eventually, that passionate interest in life led him all the way to life’s source, the creator. He discovered in the Bible an explanation for all of the life that he loved so dearly and he became determined to share its message with the Tugutil people in Indonesia, even if it took him 40 years to do it. 

He was an all-in person. When he committed to a mission he took it all the way to its conclusion. He never stopped halfway. He was a serious man with a laugh that could shake mountains. He was a happy man that would be moved to tears by a sunset. He loved the beauty of life and he never lost his sense of wonder. 

In my life, I want to be more like Keith Miles.