Audrey Mae Miller

Audrey Mae Sigur Miller was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 28, 1931 to Marie Lillian Pecot Sigur and John Adolph Sigur. She graduated from St. Charles Academy in 1948, pursued additional secretarial training at a local business school, and worked for many years at a variety of clerical assignments, including the Lake Charles City Marshall and Lake Charles City Court. In 1953 Audrey married Charles Kenneth Miller, a childhood neighbor and longtime friend, after corresponding through letters during Kenneth’s time in the United States Army. These letters evince a passionate, dedicated love that sustained Audrey and Kenneth through difficult times and provided a model for her children and grandchildren.

A lifelong resident of Lake Charles, she was a member of the Catholic Daughters of the Americas, served as part of the Catholic Family Movement, and held numerous volunteer positions across her church parish and broader civic community.

Above all else, Audrey’s indomitable spirit burned most fiercely in the service of those she loved. After losing her infant daughter Lynette, Audrey overcame this tragedy and provided a comfortable life and quality education for her children, all of whom finished college and raised their own children in turn. It was this extended family that provided the greatest joy of Audrey’s life. Friends and family recall that few interactions with Audrey could take place without her describing what each of the grandchildren was doing, and when a grandchild received any kind of honor or award, “Nana” made little effort to contain her pride. Audrey was indefatigable in crisscrossing the country to participate in the lives of her grandchildren, her boundless love and enthusiasm fueling many trips across Louisiana, Texas, California, Hawaii, New York, and elsewhere.

Around 1975 she and Kenneth began leasing a fishing camp on the Calcasieu River near Kinder, Louisiana, and for more than 30 years this creaky, musty-smelling houseboat on pilings, crouched precariously atop a red clay bluff, served as the gathering place for generations of Sigurs. The camp at Neville’s Bluff represented the full flowering of Audrey and Kenneth’s love for their family, a place where Audrey could dote on her nieces and nephews and Kenneth could lead the children on walks through the woods.

Blessed with a stubborn instinct for self-betterment, Audrey rarely shied away from new challenges. After leaving the workforce to raise her family, Audrey plunged into a second career in real estate and was named “Realtor Associate of the Year” in 1979 for outstanding service and contributions to the real estate profession.

And despite having grown up with limited financial means and few opportunities for artistic training, Audrey taught herself to paint and work with porcelain -- developing a personal >

This eye for color, design, and order also led Audrey into the garden, where she found meaning in tending to her flower beds. Visits to Audrey’s home often began with a tour of the backyard for updates on the health of each variety, interrupted by her obsessive tendency to bend down and pick out just one more weed -- as well as by her disapproving commentary when she came across a flower bed that fell short of her standards and needed to be improved.

In Audrey’s personality many disparate threads were bound together. Alongside her compulsive striving for order, Audrey also maintained an irreverent sense of humor throughout her life, a great love of jokes, a strong penchant for entertaining, and a catalog of rowdy stories, sometimes buoyed about on salty language. Her letters to Kenneth describe how she would go out dancing until the wee hours of the morning, and her brother recalls one night when she and Kenneth had to push the car home after it had run out of gas, for fear of alerting her parents.

Her closest friends and family remember an unreformed prankster that often went to great lengths to leap from behind a corner for the perfect scare or spin the perfect yarn, much to the chagrin of her children. She enjoyed Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and introduced the grandchildren to her afternoon highball, a ritual instituted many years earlier by Audrey and Kenneth to recap the events of the day.

To complement her seafaring language and brown liquor, Audrey was ruthless when it came to cards or dominoes. She had long since memorized all of the two-letter Scrabble words, and she gave no quarter even when playing with her grandchildren. Described as a feisty basketball player during her time at St. Charles, Audrey loved the New Orleans Saints and LSU Tigers, and she derived tremendous pleasure from a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking with her sons-in-law, whom she adored like her own children.

Audrey Sigur Miller was one of a kind.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Charles Kenneth Miller, her parents, Marie Lillian Pecot Sigur and John Adolph Sigur; her sisters, Elaine Sigur Sheppard and Anne Sigur O’Connor, her brother, Gerald Sigur, and her daughter, Lynette Miller.

Audrey is survived by her sisters, Betty Lou Sigur Richards and Suzanne Sigur Shreve; her brother, Donald Sigur; her daughters, Yvonne Miller Stroud, Emily Miller Sievert and husband Paul, and Valerie Miller Primeaux and husband Russel; her son, Charles Miller and wife Sharon Mosing Miller; her 12 grandchildren, Karl Stroud, Sean Stroud, Lauren Stroud, Jonathan Sievert, Kyle Sievert, Estelle Sievert, Steven Primeaux, Mark Primeaux, Philip Primeaux, Brian Primeaux, Ryan Miller, and Mallory Miller; and her three great-grandchildren, Jai Sievert, Baize Sievert, and Ellora Sievert.

Reception to follow our services at Our Lady Queen of Heaven Catholic Church Life Center.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Alzheimer’s Research Foundation.