SIG 4
Interviewee: Janice Miller
Interviewer: Deborah Hendrix
Date: April 23, 2004


 Janice Miller was born in Montgomery, Alabama. After attending Troy State
College towards a degree in Music and Education she moved to Atlanta, Georgia where
she met her future first husband, a surveyor. They both moved to St. Simons Island,
Georgia.
 There she met Billy Gibson, personnel director of Sea Island Company, who was
a member of her church and through that contact she was hired as a "floater" to work for
Sea Island Company. She was twenty-two when she was first hired in 1973.
She worked in various capacities within the company; as a secretary in the garage, as a
manager's helper in the cottage rental cleaning group, and finally as Billy Gibson's
secretary. The infant Sea Island Credit Union was also in place within the personnel
office where she worked, and when the only person handling the then tiny credit union
left, she took over that position.
 As the Company grew so did the credit union. One of the purposes of the
creation of the Sea Island Credit Union was to assist its African American employees in
purchasing their homes and other personal loans, an unlikely event in the 1970s in that
region of the South. Also, African Americans were targets of "loan sharks" charging
usurious rates and the credit union provided an avenue for reasonable management of
their money.
 Miller remembers how the credit union grew and some of the progressive
characteristics of the Sea Island Credit Union, such as its database system. She
remarks that the credit union reflects the character of its members, who in turn reflected
the attitude of the Sea Island Company. She values the idea of a culture of family that
the Company portrays in taking care of Sea Island Credit Union's members, but
stresses that Sea Island Company and Sea Island Credit Union are two separate
entities.
Miller concludes the interview by summarizing her feelings of her own accomplishments
over her thirty plus years of working for Sea Island and the credit union and her feelings
of its place in the community.


H: I'm here at the Sea Island Credit Union in Brunswick, Georgia. This is SIG 4.
 We're going to interview, today, Janice Miller. By the way, this is very informal.
 If you want to get up, that's fine. For the record, can you tell us your name?

M: My name is Janice Miller.

H: That's your full name?


M: Yes.