PHOTOS BY STEVE EXUM ’ 92
with lots of different voices to speak.”
This low-profile approach has earned
Miller a reputation for reason, pragmatism
and civility. “Todd does his job quietly,” said
Gavin Smith, director of UNC’s Coastal
Hazards Center. “He calls attention to the
coast, not to himself.”
‘Enormous public interest’
Simpson met Miller when Simpson’s
band was staging a production of music
and stories called King Mackerel and the
Blues Are Running. Miller persuaded him
to put on a benefit performance for the
federation in Carteret County, and King
Mackerel took the bait. Miller offered
bunks to the band at his place in Ocean.
“Todd came in that night around 11 or
midnight and asked if anyone wanted to go
out shrimping,” Simpson recalled. “He had
a little fishing boat maybe 26 feet long
with some trawl nets. So out we went. It
was a warm night in June, and there we
were on Bogue Sound, just off his place in
Ocean, smelling the salt air, pulling up nets.
He put us right in the middle of what we
had been writing and singing about.”
People will listen to Miller, even when
they don’t much like the message. John
Dorney, supervisor of the Wetlands Pro-
gram Development Unit for the N.C.
Department of Environment and Natural
Resources and a previous recipient of a
National Wetlands Award, calls Miller “a
tireless advocate for clean water and wet-
lands protection.”
“Coastal water quality and wetland pro-
tection would be much less robust if Todd
and his organization hadn’t been here,”
Dorney said.
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