North Shore NewsThe North Shore Chamber of Commerce is pleased to announce that Antya Miller, former Executive Director of the Chamber, is this year’s North Shore Kama‘aina of the Year. She will be honored at their Annual Christmas Party and Auction on December 11th at Waimea Valley.
Raised on Waialua Sugar Company’s hospital grounds, and later near Laniakea, Antya is the daughter of Dr. Rodman and Anne Miller. In Waialua, she and her siblings would walk from their Kupahu Street home to Fujioka’s Store or Matsumoto’s in Haleiwa to buy crack seed, manapua or other treats and play barefoot with the gang of neighborhood kids from sun-up to sunset. Since there were no cell phones in those days, Antya’s parents would call them home by blowing a conch shell, which their dogs also heeded. Their home on the plantation was literally a few yards away from the hospital’s men’s ward. It was an open lanai and the kids
would often visit with the patients. Her dad would send her over to Julia, the lab tech, to wash the test
tubes and help with other simple tasks starting at age 9. In 1965, the family moved to their new beach
home and Dr. Miller started his private practice in the old Kua Aina building.
Antya enjoyed growing up on the beach swimming, surfing, playing volleyball, laying net, making bon fires and riding horses in Pupukea and hotwalking horses at the Polo Field. With Girl Scouts’ activities, sewing lessons with Mrs. Aoki, movies on the weekends at the three local movie theaters (no T.V. until 1970), there wasn’t time to be bored. Her parents taught her to have a strong work ethic through work at the clinic during summer vacations, to value service to one’s community, and to be politically engaged.
Antya attended college at Louisiana State University, where her grandfather was a horticulture professor. She met her husband, Boyd Ready and they married and went on to grad school at Penn State where Antya studied public administration. In 1978, she answered her dad’s call to help him with managing his medical practice and the transition to his new office building behind First Hawaiian Bank. Dr. Miller’s clinic was a full-service family practice including lab, X-ray, and pharmacy. Antya came to know hundreds of North Shore residents as patients and friends.
When her Dad retired, she began pursuing her passion to preserve and improve Haleiwa and the North Shore. Antya wanted to preserve its special rural and historic character, agriculture, small mom & pop businesses, and close-knit community. She volunteered with Haleiwa Main Street in 1998, became president and then the volunteer administrator until 2005, when she became the paid Executive Director.
Antya was a key leader in landscaping Weed Circle, renovating of the historic Haleiwa Gym, and restoring the Mutual Telephone Company Building, transforming it into the Chamber’s home and a Visitor and Business Services Center for the North Shore. She is also in her 19th year leading the annual Christmas parade, restoring this community tradition after the sugar company closed. With the Historic Preservation Committee, Antya developed the Haleiwa historic walking tour with guide map and presented six major events featuring Waialua and North Shore history. She also served on the Neighborhood Board for many years, organizing the Agriculture and Transportation Committees, completed the North Shore Disaster Preparedness Plan and many other projects. Since her retirement in 2016, Antya has been volunteering as the chair of
the Chamber’s Historic Preservation Committee to research local history and place interpretive plaques
on the historic buildings and sites in Haleiwa.
Antya says, “I could not have accomplished anything without the support and mentorship of so many others: my family, Bill and Peggy Paty, Ron Valenciana, Meryl Andersen, Carolyne Lazar, Trish Coder and countless others. We make our communities and our country strong through volunteerism.”