This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Lou Miller, former director of Salt Lake City International Airport who oversaw its expansion when it became a Delta hub, has received the Airports Council's William E. Downes Jr. Memorial Award.
By receiving the 2016 prize, Miller joins the company of Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, for International Aviation and Aircraft Noise Abatement Policy; Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine; Elrey Jeppesen, developer of the Jeppesen navigation charts; T. Wilson, chairman of The Boeing Co. for more than 40 years, and Col. Frank Borman, former astronaut and former head of Eastern Airlines.
Miller was appointed director of Salt Lake City's airport in 1983 under then-Mayor Ted Wilson. After years overseeing the airport's elevation to a major hub and destination of several direct international flights, Miller moved to Tampa, Fla., as that city's airport director, and later oversaw Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International, the nation's busiest airport.
He is retired and living back in Salt Lake City.
—
• Operation Give, directed by retired Chief Warrant Officer Paul Holton, also known as "Chief Wiggles," began its 2016 charity drive earlier this month when volunteers met at Flat Rate Doctors in Pleasant Grove to stuff 25,000 stockings with gifts. The stockings will be delivered to deployed military members.
This marks the 12th year of delivering a little Christmas joy to those away from their friends and families.
Operation Give began when Holton, a member of the Utah Army National Guard, was on active duty in Iraq in 2003. He began to send back emails, detailing his time and activities, to a friend in Salt Lake City, who then created a blog so that others could read Holton's journal.
Holton's family and friends started sending him packages with items to make life in the desert summers more bearable. He shared the gifts with other GIs. Upon his return to Utah, he launched the program to send stuffed holiday stockings to soldiers abroad.
—
• Ray Wheeler has been a tireless advocate for cleaning up the Jordan River on Salt Lake City's west side.
He has gone on hundreds of trash-collecting expeditions in his kayak and works with government officials to teach them about cleaning up the river and the adjoining open space for wildlife habitat. He is organizing regular cleanup drives with neighbors — both by foot and kayak — and he has volunteered hundreds of hours to beautifying the waterway.
As a result, he recently was awarded a 2016 Good Neighbor Award by "Nextdoor," a private online social network.
—
• Salt Lake Tribune intern Zoe Woolf McGinn was driving from Orem to Salt Lake City recently when she became worried that a tire was low on air, so she stopped at a 7-Eleven near Orem to fill it up.
She was struggling with the hose when Austin Westmoreland, a Utah Valley University police officer who was off-duty but working as a security guard at a nearby Check City, asked if he could help.
He hopped into his car and had her follow him to a Discount Tire, where all of her tires were filled with air. He said she should be able to get home, but if she stopped on the way at the Discount Tire in Lindon and told them his name, the shop would fix the leak for free.
—
• Mary Aa lives just below 1300 East near 500 South, about a block away from the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium, where hundreds of football fans pass by after parking on the street to walk to games.
On the afternoon of this season's Utah-BYU game, she had gone to the store. When she returned home, she had inadvertently left her purse on the hood of her car in her driveway.
Later, after throngs of fans had walked by to go to the game, she realized she didn't have her purse, went outside and saw it on the hood. All the cash and credit cards were intact. While the purse was easily in view from the street, nobody touched it.
—
• In the wake of the recent death of actor and director Gene Wilder, Murray resident Shaun Delliskave shared a story he had gotten years ago from his friend Paul Lambert, now living in Idaho Falls.
Lambert was a room service waiter at Little America in Salt Lake City and delivered breakfast to a VIP guest. When he got to the room, he recognized the guest as Wilder. After a pleasant exchange, Wilder thanked him for not asking for his autograph. Lambert told him he believed that everyone has an inalienable right to anonymity. Then, sheepishly, he remembered that Wilder had to sign his breakfast receipt for the room. They both laughed.
When Lambert was outside the room, he noticed that Wilder had signed the receipt as "Richard Pryor" in block letters.