Wildegeest Foundation is Rooted in the Past
(Ted Miller Bio)

Oh my, oh my," sighs the man, "My bio’s long enough to overload the Internet and blow every danged fuse. Legend has it that I was Dixie born, in 1913, SUH, in Texas,  SUH, likely on a frosty morn. Early and later true-life adventures of "the man" (that’s me) are described in WILDEGEEST! A Search for Last Places, click, here to check it out. 

I graduated from Johns Hopkins University, School of Engineering, B. S. In Chem., 1935. which qualified me to be assistant chemist in a rubber heel and sole factory at $45.00/month. Then I moved upward to a consulting chemists firm in Brooklyn, New York, where I was finally promoted to "Account Executive" at $75.00/month. A client recommended me for a job in Washington, DC, where new agencies were being formed to deal with the anticipated war effort. I was inducted into the Army in 1943 and demobilized three years later.

I immediately bought a Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Bluenose Schooner, which served as my home and office while employed by Chesapeake Bay canneries and freeze plants. Then in, October, 1948, I sailed to Morehead City, North Carolina where Wallace Fisheries Co. agreed to sponsor a research and quality control program in their North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana menhaden plants.

The Wallace plants were major producers of menhaden fish meal and oil, and later, a product called menhaden fish solubles. Menhaden oil is an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids, the significance of which we were unaware. We shared the feed manufacturers’ interest in an "unidentified growth factor" in fish meal which accelerated the growth of chickens. Vitamin B-12 was discovered in 1948 and turned out to be the "unknown animal protein factor "that had kept us so mystified. .

In the fifties, I prepared and circulated a technical bulletin, "Fish Oil - A Material with a Thousand Uses", which did not include foods. . The fats and oils trade journal, "Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter" didn’t say much about foods, either. My perceptions suddenly changed, when two famous scientists entered my life.

Dr. E. H. Ahrens, Jr., Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, came to my laboratory in search of a palatable fish oil, a long way from the prime crude product that we were producing. It required several months to develop the raw material preservation and processing methods needed to produce five gallons of menhaden body oil. It was used in a landmark study, reported in Lancet, Jan. 17:115 (1959), The effect on human lipids of a dietary fat, highly unsaturated, but poor in essential fatty acids. German chemists were employed by Rockefeller Institute to pioneer the analytical methods (commonplace today), needed to determine the structures of unsaturated fats and oils that were used in the study.

Dr. John Lovern was Director of Torry Research Station, Aberdeen, Scotland and has been described as "one of the early fathers" of fish lipid research. His interest in menhaden processing plants brought him to our shores, and resulted in long lasting cooperation and friendship. It was John Lovern and Pete Ahrens who inspired much of my research for the next thirty years, except in the early seventies, when I received a five year appointment as Food Science Sea Food Extension Specialist, North Carolina State University Seafood Laboratory. I conducted research and worked with the fishing industry, to improve and derive increased benefits from seafood processing and new product development.

For the next fifteen years, my work as Director of Marine Chemurgics Laboratory, involved projects sponsored jointly by industry and government. These studies were concerned with preservation and utilization of raw materials, production of intermediates and food applications designed to protect the highly reactive, heat-sensitive omega-3 fatty acids, and make them acceptable, beneficial and safe for human consumption.

The death of my wife, Sylvia, mother of our four children, after a forty year marriage, brought Marine Chemurgics Laboratory to a halt. Again, please refer to the online e-book and read how the 76 year old man and family dog, Dora, embarked on a series of travel odysseys that continue to this day (with bestfrienddog Theodore taking over, when I was eighty). In looking through the e-book, please note the chapters about the importance of food and water, and my growing concern for the segregation of old people, and their prevailing inadequate diets.  This led to my starting EarthWise Farm, a pesticide-free sustainable demonstration farm, that has now metamorphed into WILDEGEEST FOUNDATION, with GREAT EXPECTATIONS.