In search of a veteran

Costa Mesa resident James Russell Brown marvels at how much of a man’s life can fit in one box.

Brown, 73, keeps a tattered cardboard crate crammed with yellowing bits of paper, worn yearbooks and crumbling newspaper clippings in his small Costa Mesa apartment. Inside, faded penciled doodles of ships and military barracks, a high school diploma from Arkansas and a handful of tarnished Vietnam-era Navy medals tell the story of Burt Louis Miller.

The box and the memories it contains were left in a vacant apartment months or years ago. Brown hopes to find Miller someday, or the man’s family.

“If he was still alive, he’d still have this stuff. His whole life is in there,” Brown said.

Brown, an ex-Marine who served in the Korean War, has never met Miller. But the veteran began to feel a special bond with the stranger when one of the maintenance men at the West Costa Mesa apartment complex where he lives showed up at his door with a cardboard box full of military memorabilia a few months ago.

The worker found the box filled with Miller’s personal effects abandoned in a vacant apartment and held onto it for — nobody knows how long — before passing it on to Brown.

“He said, ‘I knew you were in the military and I thought you’d know what to do with it,’” Brown said. “My kids would never leave this sort of stuff behind. I still have things from when I was in grade school, but maybe I’m too sensitive.”

Sifting through the musty documents and clippings, Brown slowly began to feel as if he knows the man.

“The more you read, the more you get into it, you get a feeling for it,” he said. “I’m going to see what I can do to help this guy out. He’s old enough to have a lot of kids and a lot of wives.”

The contents of the box includes a few Navy ship yearbooks, three Vietnam-era Navy service medals and a rusty three-ring binder filled with certificates of training in the electronic field and several letters of recommendation.

Nothing in the old box appears to be less than 40 years old. There are no clues as to where Miller might have lived since the mid-1960s. A Daily Pilot review of voter records and online telephone listings has not found any records of Miller. The U.S. Navy can only forward mail to a veteran’s last address on record, which typically dates from when a veteran leaves the service. A faded, typewritten service number, a form of identification once issued to servicemen and women, seems to be the best bet for locating Miller or his relatives.

“Your service number, once you get that, you’ve got it for the rest of your life,” Brown said.

Miller was born Dec. 22, 1934. He graduated from Hot Springs Senior High School in Hot Springs, Ark., in 1951 and enlisted in the Navy soon after.

Miller appears to have excelled in his Navy career.

“Burt is a conscientious and dedicated American and fulfills all his duties with enthusiasm and efficiency. It is openly evident that he grew up in a fine home and in a patriotic community,” reads a stained letter of recommendation dated Dec. 1, 1965.

Miller’s medals, their ribbons’ tattered and frayed, included a Vietnam Service Medal, a Navy Good Conduct Medal and a Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. The honors indicate Miller would have served in Vietnam sometime between 1965 and 1973. Newspaper clippings and military papers reveal he was stationed in 1961 at the Key West Naval Station in Key West, Fla.

“A guy that did that much, I can’t believe they’d forget about him,” Brown said. “This would have wound up in the trash.”

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.