Family History: Four Generations of LSU Tigers

05/01/20
BATON ROUGE - Incoming freshman Jane Hamilton is a fourth generation LSU Tiger. Hamilton, of Spring Lake, New Jersey, is the daughter and granddaughter of passionate LSU alumni. Their dedication and love of LSU began with Jane’s maternal great-grandfather.

“I have been visiting the campus my whole life. I’ve always known I would be going to LSU. I feel like I’ve been waiting my four high school years to go,” Hamilton said. 

The family’s LSU history starts with Jane’s great-grandfather, Boyce Miller, and his sisters, who attended LSU in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1934, Miller and his father loaded their prize-winning pig into their truck, and drove to the Baton Rouge campus from their home in Livingston Parish.

“This was during the Great Depression. The story is that my dad had raised a champion hog for the parish fair and he won a ribbon. He and his dad took the hog to the LSU campus because they didn’t have any money and they offered LSU the hog as a down payment on his tuition,” said Clare Miller, Boyce’s daughter. “LSU took the hog, he [Boyce] became a student, and they gave him a job of caring for the hog, along with other barnyard animals.”

After graduating from LSU in 1938, Miller was a teacher in Louisiana for 33 years, specializing in agriculture and horticulture. He taught an additional 11 years in Florida before retiring. He also received his master’s degree from LSU in 1952 in agriculture.

“But he taught until he was 70 years old” Miller said.

Clare Miller attended LSU from 1958 to 1962. She studied home economics, specializing in dietetics and food systems management. She also returned to LSU to receive her master’s in human ecology in 1979, specializing in nutrition. Her career has focused on child nutrition, working for the Louisiana Department of Education as well as the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, in the federal school meal programs.

“I was 60 when I went to Washington. I worked as a senior nutritionist with the child nutrition division for the USDA,” Miller said. 

Her daughter, Laurie, also attended LSU, studying journalism and graduated in 1987. Laurie met her husband, Patrick, an engineering student from New Jersey, at a university dining hall. Patrick graduated in 1984. After working as the head of construction for Walmart, Patrick now leads construction for Hudson’s Bay Company, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue. Throughout his career, the family has moved around the world, finding other LSU graduates in places like Brazil.

“We were members of an LSU Brazil alumni association,” Laurie said. “We always wanted our kids to go to LSU.”

Jane’s older sister, Clare, is a current LSU student, studying engineering. Jane will study biology as an Ogden Honors College student. Even as the Hamilton family lives in New Jersey, they share their LSU pride.

“We fly the LSU flag proudly here,” Hamilton said.

Jane’s grandmother is proud the family has continued to attend the university her father loved.

“My dad would be really pleased. He left a legacy for my family that we all have gone to LSU. That was a man whose blood flowed purple and gold,” Miller said.

 

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Contact Rachel Holland
LSU Media Relations
rachelsp@lsu.edu