Ileana Harriett Sooter

Ileana Harriett Miller was born in Huston, Idaho on February 28, 1929, the second of two children, both girls to Archie and Thelma (Jones) Miller. She was named after Romanian princess Ileana. Though our Ileana was raised on a farm, she yet carried the dignity, finesse and elegance of her namesake.

She overcame a great deal of sickness early in her life even having a mystery disease, which was later identified as PXE (pseudo xanthoma elasticum). She grew up on a farm in Southwest Idaho, later worked at a packing shed packing apples. She taught herself how to do artwork. She worked in movie theater when she was 16 where part of her job was to dress in period and other styles of clothing to promote the movies that were showing and she always enjoyed dressing up to the nines.

She definitely had a servant’s heart and that even showed up in the choices she made for employment and volunteer work. She worked as an Usherette at Adelaide Theater in the 1940’s, Hostess at LA Paloma restaurant and was a Jewelry store cashier. Later in life she also took in ironing and sewing for people to help with family finances.

Throughout her life, she always helped at church when possible, even if it caused her some sacrifice. She idolized her dad and was very close to her mother and sister throughout her life, she was known around her circles and our church as a prayer warrior keeping many prayer journals. One of things she would lament to me was that she often felt that she wasn’t able to be much help around the Church. I looked at her one time with absolute shock and said, “Please tell me you didn’t quit praying, because that is the most important job around here. She just smiled and said, you know I didn’t quit praying, so I just told her to keep that up and I couldn’t ask more than that of most anyone.”

When she first started coming to our church with Mike, she kind of sat back and listened to the preaching and teaching like she knew what was being said was in the Bible but hadn’t heard it quite that way before. After several months, she began to really enjoy our church and the spirit of love and acceptance she spoke about. She told me one Sunday after church that she knew she wanted to be baptized like Peter said in Acts 2:38. On February 4, 2011 just a couple weeks shy of her 82nd birthday, I baptized her in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of her sins. She loved the Word and sometimes after church she would tell me “Pastor that was a good message”. I would smile and tell her thank you, your check is in the mail.

She could as a mother, be firm, but always had her children’s best at heart, putting them first. She was very supportive of her son and his sports and other ventures. She loved family time at holidays, especially Christmas at her mom’s in Idaho. Regular picnics with family members (Aunts and Uncles) snow machining with friends and flying in Don’s airplane. She also enjoyed putting together birthday parties for her children.


Ileana was multi-talented being an accomplished artist, winning many blue ribbons at the county fair for her artwork. She did Oil painting and pencil drawing on a variety of subjects and once she took a postage stamp picture of the Blue Angels and enlarged and painted it. It hangs in their headquarters. She enjoyed and was quite good at tatting, sewing, roller skating when she was younger (she could skate forward and backward). She enjoyed photography and was a voracious reader. She also loved to sing, she knew all the words to all of the hymns in the book. She could also play the piano some, but never tried to play for our services. Her favorite music was gospel music and old western cowboy type music. Some of her favorite ‘songs’ by name were Great Speckled Bird, Into a Tent Where a Gypsy Boy Lay, Little Redwing, Flight of the Bumble Bees. Her very favorite thing in life was fulfilling her desire to be homemaker, so she really was happy staying home and keeping the house immaculate, a place for everything and everything in its place almost OCD.

She didn’t learn to drive until her late thirties. Rumor has it that she might have learned to drive because her husband’s driving scared her. Her nervous nellie approach was rewarded by her husband buying her a retired Police Interceptor for her first car. Sometime later, she was driving on an old country road in Ontario, Oregon when an escaped cow ran out in front of her car. She couldn’t stop the car soon enough and hit the cow which flew over the top of the car she was driving. Travelling took on a happier form in an Australian trip with 2nd husband Don Maxon. She took a trip to Hawaii after he passed on. She later was married to Jack Sooter and they enjoyed 23 years of marriage together.

Ileana was a joy to be around. We could laugh together and cry together almost at the drop of a hat. You never had cause to doubt her love for the Lord and our little church family. She has gone back into the hands of our loving and merciful God and while we are sad for her leaving us, the Bible says, Psalm 116:15 (KJV) 15 “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”
He didn’t come just to die, He came in flesh to demonstrate how to rise above temptation and to make sure that we could join Him for all of eternity through His vicarious death. Ileana embraced that and in her later years came to even greater understanding what it meant for the one true and living God to manifest Himself in flesh bring new life to whosever would come to Him. We are better for having known her and glad for her demonstrated faithfulness.