This Maine guide and former boxer became the ‘greatest outdoor cook in America’
By Emily Burnham, Bangor Daily News Staff
There’s a long history in Maine of larger than life outdoorsmen and women, like Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby, a sportswriter who in 1897 became the first registered Maine guide; Albert “Jigger” Johnson, a colorful western Maine lumberjack; Wilmot “Wiggie” Robinson, a master Maine guide from the Katahdin region; and Bud Leavitt, longtime outdoors writer for the Bangor Daily News.
Add to that list a lesser-known but still one-of-a-kind character who helped bring the Maine outdoors to the national masses: Charley Miller, a Bangor native, Maine guide, boxing trainer, occasional writer and lecturer, and the self-proclaimed best outdoor cook in America.
When he wasn’t training boxing legends at his gym near Moosehead Lake, or taking celebrities and locals alike on canoe or fly-fishing trips, Miller was hauling his portable outdoor kitchen around in his custom-outfitted station wagon to sportsmen’s shows, Boy Scouts gatherings, private parties and other events.
Born Maurice Charles Miller in 1900, Charley was one of 10 children of Max and Rebecca Miller, prominent members of Bangor’s Jewish community. His brother, Meyer, started the original Miller’s Restaurant in 1951, later to be run by his nephew, Sonny, for many decades on Main Street. Another brother, Abe, opened the future Miller Drug with his wife, Frieda, later to be run by another nephew, Billy.
Charley wouldn’t embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of the Miller family until a little later in life. After serving in World War I, he started boxing but ended his career after his first defeat. Still enamored with the ring, in the late 1920s he combined his love of boxing with his love of the Maine outdoors, and started a training and conditioning camp on the shores of Moosehead Lake. Jack Dempsey, Primo Carnera, Gene Tunney and Jack Sharkey were just some of the major boxers of the 1920s and 1930s to train with Miller.
It was there that Miller became a Maine guide and developed his talent in the outdoor kitchen. His skills on the camp stove soon began to rival his skills as a hunter and fisherman — so much that by the 1930s he was the preferred Maine guide for legendary baseball players like Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, who came for the hunting and fishing but stayed for Miller’s enormous meals cooked over an open flame.
While Miller cooked plenty of steaks and burgers like you might see at a typical backyard cookout, he was famous for his traditional New England johnnycakes, for grilling fish caught just a few hours earlier, and even for the occasional vegetable side dish. It was rustic, but by all accounts irresistibly delicious.
Prior to the 1950s, outdoor cooking was done while camping, over a campfire, just like how Miller would prepare meals for his guide clients. After World War II, as families and their baby-boom children settled into domesticity, brick fireplaces and grills began to appear in backyards nationwide, and the family cookout as many know it today was born. The iconic Weber charcoal grill was introduced in 1951 and was an instant hit.
Though Miller was already well-established as an outdoor cook, he rode that postwar wave of cookout popularity and became an in-demand presence at sporting events nationwide. Outdoor recreation promoters would bring Miller to sportsmen’s shows across the U.S. and have him set up a tent and campfire in city parks, preparing free breakfasts for passersby. Miller appeared in ads for S.O.S. scouring pads, Eveready batteries and other national brands. He regularly filled in for the BDN’s Bud Leavitt, writing guest columns when Leavitt was on vacation.
In the 1950s, Miller traveled all over the Northeast hosting cookouts for various businesses and organizations. In 1963, he and Bangor lawyer Oscar Walker started selling their own outdoor cooker, a type of reflector oven Miller spent two years perfecting before it would hit the market. But Miller’s attempt to compete with brands like Weber was short-lived, as he died in 1966 at the age of 66.
Despite his fame as a grill master and his early career as a boxer and trainer, Miller’s first love was always the Maine outdoors — he particularly loved leading trips into the woods with Maine children to impart his love of the natural world onto future generations. In the 1950s and ’60s, he was a fixture at summer camps and youth organizations, where he would take kids for a paddle and then return and show them some of the many 16 millimeter outdoor movies he shot over the years.
He loved the outdoors so much that he reportedly turned down free tickets from Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey to see the team play in the 1946 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. He wanted to go partridge hunting instead.