Hall of Fame: Darwin Miller

Darwin Miller made his way back to South Dakota about the same time the Tea Area School District started.

Miller, who was inducted into the district’s Hall of Fame during homecoming week, had worked in insurance for 20 years before coming to Tea. Most recently before coming to manage Smith Insurance he was living in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Miller grew up east of Brookings and his wife grew up outside of Lennox. He saw an opportunity to come back to South Dakota with the job in Tea. When he got the job, the school district was working on separating from Lennox.

He remembers his boss Harlan Smith encouraging him to get involved with the new district.

“I got hooked up with the school district and just something called me that I wanted to be involved and you never have an opportunity to be involved with a brand new school district and help put it together,” Miller said.

He recalls Smith coming into his office one day asking if the district was going to have a football team and asked him to reach out to the district about what they would need to put up a scoreboard and he would buy it for them.

“I was really, really, really proud to be associated with Farmers State Bank and Smith Insurance and the school and to help fill in some of the needs that they had and the opportunities for me to be a part of it,” Miller said.

Miller helped start the Booster Club.

The district set up an 80-yard football field at the baseball field. They had purchased an old set of bleachers that had to be taken down and moved in and set up for every season. 

“I was involved with that. That was an experience and a half,” he said. 

“We were 9-man. I remember the first football game … We had our side was full and people were around the visitor side. It was amazing. It was exciting. It was an experience that Tea Area School District is unique because the people and the community, businesses all want to be a part of it, volunteering and watching the volunteers that didn’t even have kids in school come and work every opportunity they had to put this together. That was probably the most incredible thing of the whole process was seeing the volunteers come out of the woodwork and work together to put this together.”

He remembers football started off hard. The district was starting eighth-graders and going up against seniors.

“These other schools just came in and stomped us. We had more people that went to the away games than people from their hometowns that showed up,” Miller said. “It’s hard to describe how amazing it was and the support this city put together for the school district getting it started and to see where it’s come today.”

When he moved to Tea, he did not know many people. Getting involved, helped him develop relationships.

“I didn’t know a lot of people in Tea at the time, but by being involved with the school district and helping develop in my little bit that I did, you met people to this day that are extremely close friends of mine,” Miller said.

Now that he’s retired and living in Sioux Falls, he enjoys coming out to Tea to see how the town has grown and to watch the football games.

Miller was surprised of his Hall of Fame announcement and questioned his worthiness of the honor.

“I just didn’t think I was qualified. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was qualified. I was very, very, very proud to not only be part of the school but also put into the Hall of Fame for the school district was amazing,” he said.

Today, Miller thinks 95 percent of the people have no idea the amount of people it took to make the district possible. 

“The people that came out and put this school together, it was not any one or two people. It was the community. It was the town. It’s something Tea should be proud of for the rest of time,” Miller said.