Sandy’s Greatest Sports Fan
“Miles” Mildan Lloyd Aubin still loved to attend Sandy High School football and basketball games even as he neared his mid-90s. In appreciation of his being such a faithful fan, he was presented with a Sandy High School football jacket that he hadn’t been able to afford when he attended school there in the early 1930s during the Great Depression.
Miles’ family had moved to the Haley area, a mile north of “downtown” Boring in the early 1920s. Miles attended Boring Grade School and was active in sports. His interest in sports came from his father who had at one time earned his way playing pro-baseball in a minor league in the Midwest. Boring and Bull Run Grade Schools were the only neighborhood schools in the Sandy High district that had good basketball courts, so they later supplied most of the players on the Sandy High School teams. Miles once confided in later years that he had intentionally flunked a class in grade school so that he could play another year on their basketball team. Now, that’s commitment!
Miles was a three-sport letterman at Sandy High School. When he was an upperclassman, he had no barriers about speaking to a mere freshman when he found out that they followed the box-scores of major-league baseball and read Greg’s Sport column every day in the Oregonian. Also there was mutual interest in Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby’s vocals on the radio and the new, exciting “swing-music” that was sweeping the country by the mid-1930s.
Miles played center on the Sandy High School football team, was first baseman on the baseball team, and was a top scorer in basketball. Miles joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) after graduating as jobs were very scarce during the hard times of the Great Depression. He then worked in Valberg’s sawmill in Boring and played on the Boring town baseball team in the summer. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II but soon was diagnosed with tuberculosis and received a medical discharge. He later overcame the medical challenges and attended Oregon Normal School where he attained a degree. He began a 29-year teaching career at Benson Tech in Portland. He also was an amateur historian in east Clackamas County and wrote newspaper feature articles, including fond remembrances of the outhouse before indoor plumbing. After retirement, he indulged his love of sports by working as one of the officials at high school football games in the metropolitan Portland area; and as a time-keeper in high school basketball. For 15 years, he was a time-keeper at the state high school basketball tournaments. Miles followed only high school and college sports events, never the pros.
Miles retired to an acreage tract about two miles south of Sandy where he had a house built in about 1970. He kept busy thinning the timber in his forest area, cutting fireplace wood and maintaining a large garden. He often gave wild trillium plants, potatoes, corn, and zucchini to his friends. He was active in the Sandy Historical Society as a historian with memories of people, particularly those of the Boring area.
Miles organized his first class (of 1933) Sandy High School reunion dinner in 1963. He began adding another class every year, but the event grew so big that there was no place to hold it and the number had to be reduced.
When Miles died at age 95 the reunion dinners stopped, so renewal had to be left to a different generation.
“I’ll never have a school named after me,” Miles Aubin had said. “But I hope someday the district will erect a Miles Aubin Memorial Outhouse.” Accordingly, after he died, the Sandy Historical Society used the museum’s second-story fire escape door opening to represent an authentic privy, with a bronze plaque honoring Miles Aubin.
Bosserman, D. (2020, Nov 12). I’ll never have a school named after me, but I hope someday-- [Comment in the article “On the Other Hand: The Chick in the Outhouse: A Mother’s Love.”]. The Northwest Connection.
Historical Publications of Oregon State University, Oregon State University. (10 Aug 2024). The Beaver 1947, Vol 41, Editor Ramona Warnke, 147. Retrieved from https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/2z10wq89b
Jonsrud, P. (2011). Hometown Sandy Oregon: 36 short stories, c. Sandy Historical Society, Inc., 55-57.
Mee Ma, Editor: Jadwin, et. al., printed and published by The Senior Class of Sandy High School, May 1933, 8. [The 1933 class named this first annual.] Linotype from Gresham Outlook. Archive photos courtesy of Sandy Historical Society, Inc.
