MEEKER | Onea Jewel Miller has patience and tact when dealing with an idiot (namely this reporter). Despite his clear instructions for how to get to their house on a mile of winding road, I took the wrong turn, twice. My white pickup took a wrong turn into a field. He thought I might get stuck so he picked up his cell phone to tell me that the snow-filled ditch might be a problem. The problem would be if he had tot pull the idiot out of a hole. This greenhorn turned carefully around and proceeded down the road, only to take another wrong turn into his neighbor’s driveway. I am sure by now he was doubled over with laughter at my expense. I finally rounded the corner to the Miller ranch with its beautiful red shops, barns trimmed in pewter gray, including his roping arena, where he still trains his horses and finally up the winding hill to his hilltop log home and another red and pewter gray workshop. By then, I was ready to warm up in front of the wood pellet stove placed on a custom hearth shaped like a grand piano.
Miller gave me a grand tour of his house which he, his wife Michelle, and their kids built from scratch in 1988 — without a contractor. His master bedroom includes his spur collection, one of which was given to him by a Canadian Mountie. He also has a letter opener collection from all over the world, three from Africa. This didn’t fit with my mental image of an old west cowboy/rancher and all-around good guy. Onea said his unusual name came from his grandfather, Onea Seaphorse Miller. Onea means jaguar in Belize. My own research on meaningslike.com claims Onea means “ambition, independence, strength, reliability, determination and professionalism.” I am not even going to guess where the name Seaphorse came from.
Miller has always been around horses since he was young, even riding to school on horseback when he was eight. His dad, Buddy, besides being a rancher, was a professional calf roper, reining and cutting horse trainer. Miller grew up on his parents’ ranch about 65 miles east of Colorado Springs, Colorado. As a teen, he and his dad and brothers competed in numerous rodeos and horse shows in Colorado and surrounding states.
As they say, if you ride horses long enough, one of them is going to hurt you. At age, 15, Onea spent considerable time in the hospital recovering after his horse stepped in a hole, fell forward and landed on top of him while gathering cattle. Onea’s dad, Buddy, also liked to race horses. He didn’t like to lose, so he traveled to Durango and bought a fast horse. Sassy was a AAA-plus-rated horse, which means absolutely nothing to me except that it equates to “expensive.“ Buddy bought Onea his first jockey and training saddles, including a helmet that has many dents in it now. Onea began racing on Sassy and won numerous races and many calf roping events with his dad and brothers. They were constantly training other horses and practicing. Before graduating from high school, Onea tied for the National Champion Little Britches Cutting Horse competition in Denver, Colorado, and won performance horse shows. He loved showing performance calf roping horses.
Summers as a kid don’t last forever. Onea could never sit still and he built a homemade camper for his neighbor’s new Ford pickup after he graduated from high school, and embarked on an adventure to Alaska with seven of his friends, his cousin, Uncle Heavy and dad. They hunted caribou and flew to Kodiak Island to look at a ranch to buy. That ranch is still in the family. When he came back, his dad informed him that college was the next step. Dad was definitely a spoilsport.
Onea first attended Lamar College. While he was in college, he helped pay his way by training quarter and thoroughbred race horses. Next, he attended the University of Southern Colorado while competing in rodeos and training race horses. After that, he majored in veterinary science at CSU and to his advantage, there were numerous race horse fanatics in the area. Jack Rydberg, a professional cutting horse trainer for the Pine Cone Ranch, hired Onea to train horses for him. Onea rode 18 race horses in the morning, then trained the cutting horses each day with Jack after that. Pat Brady and the Sons of the Pioneers lived at the Pine Cone Ranch. Imagine rubbing elbows with the band that worked with Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Trigger, and Nelliebell, Pat Brady’s Jeep. Onea was very good friends with Pat Brady and so sad when he passed away. One of Onea’s big races was the 1966 Cheyenne Frontier Days race. Riding for Rydberg, jockeying an appaloosa horse named Cuchara High Hand, Onea finished first. As a jockey, Onea weighed only 118 pounds. The win earned him a cover story in a magazine called SADDLE UP and he was also featured in Western Horseman Magazine. After winning the race, he decided that racing at that level was a high risk and dangerous. The professional jockeys, let’s say they were not all kind and honorable to western folk that beat them. Onea jockeyed many good horses to the finish line.
After that, Onea had to put college on a hold as his dad got lupus and Onea had to return home and help run the ranch. Along with ranching himself, Onea’s dad bought and sold numerous large ranches. Onea learned the legal end of sales contracts first hand. This served Onea well in his later career in business, including Grand Junction, Meeker and all over the state as a real estate agent, broker and owner with many sales agents under him. Onea moved to the Meeker area in 1967. To use his own words, he “was excited to live in a beautiful area with such good people.”
Asked Onea how he met his blond bride, Onea explained that Michelle was attending the 1969 Fourth of July rodeo in Meeker. Onea jockeyed a horse owned by Jay Gentry and Jim Sheridan and won (Onea roped with Jay Gentry for several years after that). Someone suggested Michelle should meet this guy named Onea Miller. Michelle replied that she would never date anyone with a strange name like “Onea.” A bit of matchmaking by friends and family ensued. The couple formally met on July 9 at the Strawberry Creek school house at a celebration for Dorothy Miller’s (Onea’s mother) birthday.
On their first date, Michelle watched Onea shoe horses for Mr. Joyce Rawlinson. The second date was equally romantic. He took her riding with some pack horses to deliver salt to stock on the high range. A short time later at her parents’ house, Michelle told Onea that she was going on a trip to Europe. He suggested she could save money by going only halfway, just to the Bahamas, to marry him. He proposed in front of his future in-law’s chicken house. On Sept. 27 that same year, Onea and Michelle were married in Meeker. They only knew each other about 2-½ months. Both went back to college at the University of Colorado. They did honeymoon in the Bahamas and have now been married 53 years. The first ranch that Michelle and Onea partnered together was the Lone Tree Ranch in the Little Beaver and Oak Ridge Area.
Following in his father’s footsteps. Onea bought and sold large ranches every couple of years, until Michelle said “enough, kids need roots” as they were living on their 14,000-acre ranch near Chadron, Nebraska. They soon moved and bought the Yellow Jacket Ranch, northwest of Meeker, with cattle, sheep and horses.
Their 5,000 sheep required a winter grazing range. Their bands were driven along with other local outfits, (Renae Nielson’s family, Halandras’s and others) to Utah or thereabouts. Onea’s band had one of the longest travel routes, to south of Ouray, Utah. His grazing permits were issued by the Ute Tribe. They were on the roads and trails for 231 miles in about 33 days and had many adventures. He had an anxious moment one time at the Utah Reservation headquarters when dealing with permits. As he was leaving, he noticed some Native Americans chasing his Jeep pickup. As a cowboy, the adrenaline was naturally pumping, he also wasn’t far from the Wounded Knee occurrence when he lived in Nebraska, which made him jumpy. He stopped and noticed that his border collie had fallen out of the pickup. They were just trying to help.
The Millers continued buying ranches and operating them long-distance. To manage this Onea acquired a pilot’s license and a Cessna Turbo 206 to shuttle between properties in South Dakota, Chadron, Nebraska, Center Pivot Farm and Feedlot in Mitchell, Nebraska, farm and feedlot in Greeley and the ranch in Meeker.
Today, Onea has been in the complex real estate business for more than 30 years with many sales agents, operates Western Exposures Realty LLC, and cares for his livestock, horses, goat and one cat. He still rides and trains horses at 77 years of age and thanks to his great neighbor, Sheridan Harvey, who helps take the buck out of them. Sheridan also gave him a custom saddle, which he rides all the time. He and Michelle have four children, 12 grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter on the way in February. Some of their family extends all the way to New Zealand and Hawaii.
Onea would like to express his gratitude to past and present associates: Suzan Pelloni, Alex Plumb, Carolyn Plumb, Karen Reed, Joe Orris, Martha Griffin and especially Samantha Lopez, plus many others, including his clients and his indispensable wife, Michelle, who has been a huge and wise part of his success and adept qualities in real estate and life.
In conclusion, one of Onea’s goals when he gets old is to write a book: “Tall in the Saddle, Short in the Stirrups…”
By ED PECK – Special to the Herald Times
