A Letter from Mike Miller

Dear Donald,

I believe it is coincidence that I am writing to you on Huey P. Newton's birthday but wanted to reach out to you to express my unwavering gratitude for your Debt of Honor.

Though it's been some time since I've been in Los Angeles or communicated with you I occasionally check in to your website to keep updated with your work and always encounter astonishment that the fortitude and resilience of all you do has not diminished.  But then again I would expect no less from the teacher of catharsis and epiphany.  (It is no understatement to claim being one of your students equaled the symposiums of Socrates -- but I am no Plato, alas.)

So in short as I've been teaching at the college level for about 10 ten years - and when I do get to teach the classics on various semesters - the bar is always how would Donald Freed do this?

So in short, thank you again for those formative and permanent experiences.  I will never forget the classes at USC, discussions in the writer's seminars in Westwood, and the great performances -- American Illiad at Layola, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon at the Taper, discussing that draft of Ashes to Ashes Harold Pinter sent you (in '95 I think), The General and the Archbishop in the Valley - and that great moment reading Slay The Dreamer at the WGA (the list goes on).  A true Debt of Honor.  (One I still would seek to repay by funding a year long production of all the plays in sequential order should I ever come into lots of money which so far has never happened -- they don't pay much for writing these days.)

And to Patty of all the work on the foundation site -- it is a joy to be able to check in and see things from afar.

Best,

Mike Miller

PS- I can only imagine what the current seminars must be like with Buzz Windrip Jr. as our POTUS...