A pathway to get closer to Him.
While she might not have recognized it at the time of her commissioning, that is how Gen. Maryanne Miller, retired four-star general and pilot, now considers her 39 years of service in the U.S. Air Force.
A Columbus native, Miller was commissioned in 1981 as a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Ohio State University.
She ascended the ranks of the military, making history as she did. Miller, a cradle Catholic, is the first Air Force Reserve officer to achieve the rank of four-star general, the highest rank attainable. She was also the first woman to serve as chief of the Air Force Reserve.
While her military career brought numerable accomplishments, Miller ultimately considers her time in the service as God’s way of bringing her closer to Him, and in turn, leading others to Him, too.
“Just being that witness for others, it’s powerful,” she said. “God made me a four star not because I earned it, deserved it – none of that – He made me a four star to open doors, to put me in front of a lot of people to tell His story.”
In 2020, Miller retired from the service and relocated to Buckeye Lake to care for her father, 93, who is battling dementia. She now serves as his full-time caretaker. While leaving a nearly four-decade career in the Air Force was difficult and caring for her father can be challenging, Miller said she knows it is what she is called to do.
“I didn’t want to do it,” she said, “but God just asked me to do that. It was so clear.”
As a four-star general, Miller was in charge of the Air Mobility Command (AMC), one of the Air Force’s 10 major commands. She oversaw 1,100 airplanes and 110,000 people.
Men and women in the AMC consist of active duty, Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve and civilians. They provide airlift, aerial refueling, special air mission, aeromedical evacuation and mobility support.
As a three-star general, Miller ran the Air Force Reserve. In that role, she oversaw 80,000 reservists around the globe.
While she was running airplanes and air refueling tankers throughout the world, God was at the forefront.
“I don’t know how people get through the day without thinking about Him, without thanking Him, without praying to Him,” she said. “I can’t conceive a life without Him. He’s everything.”
However, it was not always that way for Miller.
She recalled walking away from the Lord and His Church before finding Him.
Miller was raised in Hilliard. She attended Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church growing up and described her parents as devout Catholics. Miller, one of six children, said she had a wonderful upbringing.
She fell away from the faith later as an Air Force pilot and stopped attending Mass.
Miller recalled the time as God being on the “back burner” and not “number one” in her life.
“Flying airplanes and traveling the world, doing worldly things was where I was, and then, eventually, you find that you’re lost,” she said. “You really find you’re lost. No matter what the world can give you, it’s never enough.
“There was a lot of notoriety,” she recalled. “You become proud. You become all the things that the world can keep telling you, that you’re a good person and you’re doing great things and you’re working your way up, and that was the focus. You find that that’s just an empty focus.”
Feeling lost, Miller began reading a book on Buddhism. Surprisingly, her exploration of the Buddhist faith brought her back to the Catholic Church. She said she learned that God is within her and had never left her.
Miller described that revelation as the “changing point.” She returned to the Church and began attending daily Mass at 6:30 a.m. before arriving for work at the Pentagon.
“In the days I couldn’t get there in the morning, the Pentagon has Mass every day, so I’d go to Mass at the Pentagon every day,” she said. “It just became a response. I just wanted to do that and be with God. I had to have it in my day.”
Miller’s colleagues in the Air Force began taking notice.
“I was able to take the life that God rejuvenated in me and say, ‘Maryanne, this is who you really are,’ and I was able to totally take that into the world of a four star and draw other people to me,” she said.
“People could see His presence, and it was beautiful. I was not judged by anything. People knew my faith. The Air Force knew my faith, and it was never an issue. It was awesome, and people would seek me out.”
Her faith was often a source of consolation for those around her.
“Sometimes it’s the military, sometimes it’s the young airman who’s having a struggle, sometimes it’s the general – the two-star general – who’s having family issues and he comes to me and says, ‘Help me out with this. I don’t know where to turn.’ Your whole walk is walking with God’s children and helping each other to stay on the path,” she said.
“That’s the power of God. When we can serve and walk the path – try to walk the path that He walked – and then others watch us, they want to be part of that. They want that. They’re not sure what to call it, but they absolutely want that.”
While in Washington, Miller developed a relationship with the Missionaries of Charity religious order.
After her mother died, Miller had planned a visit to Calcutta, India, where St. Teresa of Calcutta, who founded the Missionaries of Charity, lived and cared for the poor. She canceled plans when her father became ill.
Once he recovered, she contemplated taking the trip. Her father encouraged her to get to know the religious sisters first locally.
After her first visit with the order in 2013, Miller, then a two-star general, began serving with the Missionaries of Charity in Washington regularly on weekends. She was able to bring 10 of the sisters on a tour of the White House and to the Pentagon.
“It was really interesting for people to see,” she said, “to walk your faith, even while in uniform, to walk your faith openly.”
Miller said it became routine for her to arrive at the Missionaries of Charity convent in Washington after work on Friday and stay until Sunday evening.
“When I’d show up Monday morning at the Pentagon, all my friends were like, ‘What’d you do with the Sisters?’ It wasn’t, ‘What happened in Afghanistan?’ It had nothing to do with what we do every day. It had to do with what fed them, I realized, was my stories of going on the streets to see the homeless,” she said.
Miller recalled bringing Gen. David Goldfein, then-U.S. Air Force chief of staff, on a visit to the Missionaries of Charity one Sunday.
As chief of staff, Goldfein was responsible for the organization, training and equipping 685,000 active-duty, guard, reserve and civilian forces serving in the United States and overseas. The Air Force chief of staff and other service chiefs serve as military advisers to the secretary of defense, National Security Council and the president.
“It was just amazing to see,” Miller said. “This man is over 600,000 people, the biggest air force, the best air force on the planet, and he’s in a bright yellow apron, and we’re about ready to mop floors. I mean, amazing, his humility.”
Miller said she could easily relate to the religious sisters there.
“Their day is so structured, and I relate to a very structured day,” she said. “The military was all, from the time you get up to the time you get to bed, it was structured. We had so much in common. It was so easy to be with them, and I was able to, by being with them, recognize myself.”
Spending time with the Missionaries of Charity was “life changing” for her. Once she became involved with serving at the convent, she said “it was a quick immersion back into the Lord.”
Miller credited her family for that. Her parents provided the base for her Catholic faith. While she had left the faith for some time, Miller said, it was easy to return because of the foundation her family had given her.
In addition to caring for her father for the past four years, Miller is active at Buckeye Lake Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, where she volunteers with the food pantry and speaks to parish groups.
Miller currently serves on the boards of Manhattan College; Bristow Group, a leading provider of helicopter transportation to energy customers, search and rescue, and aircraft support solutions to government and civil organizations; and Leaven Kids, a non-profit organization serving children in poor neighborhoods with more than 20 learning centers.
She is also in the process of writing a children’s book on virtue. She said she is working with an editor from Word Among Us, and the book will be geared toward children in sixth grade.
While she maintains a full schedule between caring for her father and serving her parish and several organizations, Miller makes time to keep in touch with the men and women active in the Air Force.
“I miss my time with the airmen; I miss my time with the mission, but I stay connected with them. I stay connected with the mission and what the airmen and families are doing out there,” she said. “That’s very fulfilling to be there to support them, to help them while they’re still serving.”