Who's Who: Avery Miller

Avery Miller has been spotted for years running around El Cerrito. A few local readers wanting to know more about him stopped him mid-run a couple of weeks ago to ask him for his phone number so that they could forward it to Patch for an interview. 

Name:  Avery Miller

Age:  65

Occupation: Structural engineer

How long have you been running around El Cerrito? 45 years.

What got you into it? I used to play sports a lot when I was younger – throughout college – and when I started working I wasn’t allowed to play sports anymore so I started running instead.

Do you have a normal route that you run? I have a pretty steady one, yes.

It seems like you go up and down a lot of hills. I like to go up and down hills.

How many hours do you run a week? I probably run about three or four days a week. I’m pretty slow now, so it takes about an hour and a half, an hour and a quarter.

How many miles? It’s somewhere between nine and 10 usually.

You’re pretty dedicated. Well, you get used to it, and it’s a nice way to transition from work to whatever you’re going to do next. … And you get to see people. It just becomes part of you, I guess.

Do you go up Moeser? Yes.

Did you grow up in the Bay Area? I grew up in Kensington and then El Cerrito for many years.

Do you remember the trains? Yah, I remember the trains. The Key System trains used to stop right at the stores in Kensington.

Did you take the train when you were little? Yes.

Did you go to school for engineering? I went to and then I went to UC Berkeley. I was there in the '60s during the free speech movement.

How was going to school during those years? I stayed pretty much away from it, but it was pretty intense. The engineering part of the school is way away from where the activities were going on, and I wasn’t very political in those days so it didn’t have much of an effect. It had much more of an effect in later life, in retrospect.

Was it bothersome at times to try and get to school during the protests? Yes. Those were different times – troubled times.

Do you feel like the landscape of Berkeley has changed? It’s become more radicalized and a lot more hippy-type people that just stay there. They’ve kind of destroyed Telegraph Avenue. Before those times Berkeley was like going back to a little college town in the Midwest some place. It was just a regular place, and they had many nice clothing stores and record stores on Telegraph and Bancroft. Downtown was a thriving downtown. Then it became what it is today: a lot of street people, a lot of vacated stores. A lot of businesses had to move out because of the rioting and breaking windows. And they just never came back.

Do you feel like El Cerrito has changed at all? El Cerrito was never much of a city. It was just a bedroom community. But it’s changed characters in the racial makeup of the city. When I went to school there, you could probably count the minorities on one or two hands. Now it’s totally different. It’s changed a lot in that regard.