Sonya Miller Preis and Naomi Love

[00:04] NAOMI LOVE: Hi, I'm Naomi love. I'm 27 years old. I'm recording from El Paso, Texas. Today is January 25, 2023. And I'm speaking with Sonya my conversation partner.

[00:17] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Hi, my name is Sonya Miller, and I am from El Paso, and I'm happy to be here. And it's January 23 25th. Excuse me.

[00:36] NAOMI LOVE: No problem. So, Sonya I know you came here to talk about some figures in your family history. Would you like to tell me about, you know, some of the people that you wanted to tell us about today?

[00:50] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah, I wanted to talk about my grandfather, Joe Miller, who was a russian immigrant who came from Russia to Argentina to Mexico and ended up here in the United States. And in the process of my life, I come to find out that I have other relatives that I happened to find out five years ago that they existed. And one of them happened to be Fiona Maranoff.

[01:30] NAOMI LOVE: Oh, wow. And who is that? That name sounds familiar to me.

[01:34] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Okay. Fiona Maranoff was a silent screen actress as well as a stage actress. And she came, actually, she happened to be my grandfather's aunt, and they both were jewish. And I was not raised in the jewish faith, but I happen to know that I came from a jewish background. But the most interesting thing about all of this, that my aunt and her husband happened to be very famous throughout popular crowds like Georgia O'Keeffe, may west. They would have dinner after Mae west would perform. After she got arrested, they helped her get out of jail. Wow. That's the kind of. And I had, and I wasn't aware of it, and I find her very fascinating.

[02:51] NAOMI LOVE: So in learning about her, do you have any favorite anecdotes about her or favorite things about her that really call your attention?

[03:00] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Well, they. Okay, for example, they hung around with a very popular crowd, and it turned out that they accepted everybody and anybody, including people of color. And back then, in the 1930s and twenties, it was all taboo to do that. And I find that interesting because my family was never prejudiced against anybody. And growing up in El Paso was such a delight because we never experience people being prejudiced. And I find that interesting because I just thought that it didn't exist. It still doesn't exist except for people who are not from El Paso.

[03:55] NAOMI LOVE: Interesting. Do you feel like maybe that lack of prejudice that your great aunt had and that you grew up with are connected in some way, that maybe that was something about their parents?

[04:10] SONYA MILLER PREIS: I think so, because they were. Well, they were jewish and they were outcasts, and they were, if you think of fiddle on the roof, they were kicked out of Russia. They were thrown out of Russia. So I think that they had no reason to be prejudiced against anybody. And, you know, and she became an actress in order to feed herself.

[04:38] NAOMI LOVE: Sure.

[04:39] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah. And she was really young.

[04:44] NAOMI LOVE: Interesting. And so you said you found out about this five years ago. How did you find all of this out?

[04:50] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Well, okay. I knew my grandfather existed because it happened to be my father's father, Jill Miller. My dad was a Joe Miller, and my grandfather married several times, and I happened to meet my cousins, my half cousins from him seven years ago.

[05:18] NAOMI LOVE: Okay. And so they told you these stories.

[05:21] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yes. And my, my cousin's wife did a history on the family. Now, I knew about Fiona from my aunt from Chihuahua, and. But it never, you know. You know, I was young. I wasn't aware of her until five years ago. And Cindy Silberman was the one who told me more about her.

[05:51] NAOMI LOVE: Yeah, that's interesting. And were you aware of your jewish heritage before finding this outlande?

[05:58] SONYA MILLER PREIS: I had a little bit because my previous aunt from Chihuahua, Mexico, told me about it, and I was very, you know, I was interested in it, but my mother kind of kept it kind of a secret because my grandfather had a previous family and didn't want me to go into the previous family and the family that was existing then, so, and I was young, so they, it was, you know, back in the olden days when people didn't recognize that they were, people had been married before or had children prior to being married or, you know, or married. You know, all of that was taboo in my family. And then years later, I happened to find out that this family existed. And then through a friend, a mutual friend of ours, I got to be introduced to my cousin, Frank Silberman. And through Frank, I got to meet my other cousins, Carol and Danny Silverman. And Danny's wife, Cindy was the one who told me all the history of the Miller family. And then Fiona came into play because I thought that she was a sister to my grandfather. No, it was his aunt. And I come to find out she hadn't. She had an interesting life being an actress, being a stage actress, hanging around people that were very well known. Like I said, Georgia O'Keeffe was her friend, nay west, among other, other famous celebrities.

[08:01] NAOMI LOVE: Yeah. And do you happen to know if, like, I guess, how her fame was received by her family in that way? Was that something that they had any record of?

[08:11] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Oh, yeah. It's in, it's in the Smithsonian. It's in the Internet. If you really, really read upon her. Her. She really. Yeah, she's well known.

[08:27] NAOMI LOVE: Oh, yeah. No, I meant like her own family. So your grandfather, maybe some of his relatives, how they felt about her being famous or being an actress?

[08:38] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Oh, they were proud. He was proud of her. In fact, he came to see her. I mean, she came to see him in El Paso, and it was in the paper. Yeah. That she was coming to El Paso.

[08:50] NAOMI LOVE: Wow, that's so exciting. And how did you feel meeting these cousins in this family that you didn't know about and finding all of this out?

[09:00] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Oh, I find it interesting because it makes me recognize, well, like a sample, not being prejudiced, being who I am, understanding that I have. I've always liked a movies, stage plays, and back in high school, I used to do theater, so it made me realize I had the theatrical gene in me without knowing. But I did that only in high school.

[09:40] NAOMI LOVE: So kind of filling in some of those blanks. Yeah, definitely. And so you said your grandfather came to Argentina and then to Mexico and then to New York, is that right?

[09:56] SONYA MILLER PREIS: To New York and to El Paso.

[09:58] NAOMI LOVE: And then to El Paso. How come you came to El Paso? Or I guess if you know about any parts of that journey, because that is quite a long journey.

[10:07] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Okay. Because. Okay. It was close to Mexico.

[10:11] NAOMI LOVE: Sure.

[10:12] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Juarez was right across the border, and Chihuahua was, you know, he had a family there. Yeah.

[10:22] NAOMI LOVE: Gotcha. And what was life for you like growing up in El Paso?

[10:31] SONYA MILLER PREIS: It was wonderful. It was wonderful. I mean, you know, everybody couldn't wait to leave El Paso. I wanted to stay in El Paso. And to be honest with you, I don't know why I wanted to stay here, because everybody wanted to go to New York and wanted to go to LA, Dallas, you know, big cities, Denver, everywhere, big cities. And I wanted to stay here because I really liked the people. I like the, as I would say, el Paso has flavor, and I like the. Like I said, I loved everybody. I grew up and with my friends who stayed here, we're still friends, and my friends who left here are lining up to come back.

[11:20] NAOMI LOVE: Yeah, it really does seem like a lot of people either stay here or come back one way or another. El Paso doesn't pull in that way.

[11:29] SONYA MILLER PREIS: It's beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful culture and there's no strangers here. You could be in the grocery store and you start talking to somebody and end up being friends.

[11:46] NAOMI LOVE: No, it's definitely inviting. And I know you mentioned you had an aunt in Chihuahua. Did you ever go and visit her there or did she come and visit you in El Paso?

[11:55] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yes. Both ways.

[11:57] NAOMI LOVE: Gotcha. And what was it like growing up, you know, coming back and forth between El Paso and going into Mexico versus now, if you've gone recently?

[12:06] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Well, Mexico also has flavor. Very family oriented, I think. And it has, it's rich in history because some of the buildings are like the churches. If you go see the church, they're just beautiful. And going out there, there was a main market that I would go frequently to and you would buy food, tablecloths, clothing, souvenirs, you name it. And it was just a. And go eat, go listen to mariachis all in one place. And that was the way you would shop in Juarez in Mexico. And she always was the same way.

[13:19] NAOMI LOVE: It sounds like a beautiful way to grow up, getting to experience that culture.

[13:24] SONYA MILLER PREIS: It's wonderful.

[13:28] NAOMI LOVE: And how has El Paso changed across your lifetime?

[13:33] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Well, we have more people. I mean, like many people, and we're still growing. And it's beautiful in the sense that they're beautifying El Paso. It didn't have a lot of culture. And it was, it was really kind of. It was really. It was really fun, you know, to go to really see El Paso grow, you know, mixed in the new with the old. The sad part, we lost our Carnegie library. And I really didn't appreciate it growing up. But now that I'm. I see the library being updated, I wish we could have kept the old and done something more with it.

[14:36] NAOMI LOVE: Gotcha. Do you have any memories of that library? Or maybe what you used to do there when you were younger?

[14:45] SONYA MILLER PREIS: I would just go and use it. And it was old, but it was really nice. But come to find out that our library, believe it or not, used to be a cemetery.

[14:58] NAOMI LOVE: Oh, really?

[15:00] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah, the one that exists now that they're working on. So it's really. El Paso has so much to offer. And like I said, we also have great restaurants and we have a wonderful mexican food. Nothing compares to our mexican food like you go anywhere else. Our mexican food is really good.

[15:38] NAOMI LOVE: I know. I've been enjoying it while we're here in El Paso. It's delicious.

[15:43] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah, it's wonderful.

[15:46] NAOMI LOVE: Definitely. And going back to what we were talking about before, I know when you met your, your cousins and found all this out about your history, did you end up sharing that with other family members that you have? Maybe?

[15:59] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah, I did.

[16:00] NAOMI LOVE: How did they react?

[16:03] SONYA MILLER PREIS: You want to know? It was like, well, they had a hard time accepting it, but then they got to meet each other and we've all gotten to know each other. And come to find out, I ended up learning that I had an aunt, another aunt, and she was the first one besides my aunts in Chihuahua. She was from Chihuahua also, but she was the first one. And then come to find out, we always thought my dad was the only male. He had a brother.

[16:43] NAOMI LOVE: Wow. And did he know about that?

[16:47] SONYA MILLER PREIS: No, no, no. In fact, they both passed away not knowing they had brothers. And they all both felt alone because they had different mothers. And my uncle, the one who passed away, his mother told him that Joe Miller, my grandfather, had passed away and he hadn't passed away. So he died thinking that his father had died when he was young and it wasn't so.

[17:30] NAOMI LOVE: Oh, that's so hard.

[17:32] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yes. So. And my dad did get to know his father.

[17:44] NAOMI LOVE: He did, you said?

[17:46] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yes, my dad did.

[17:49] NAOMI LOVE: And what was his relationship like with him?

[17:53] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Like friends, like strangers. But they would see each other.

[17:58] NAOMI LOVE: Yeah. Well, that's really to get to reconnect in that way.

[18:02] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah. And my grandfather never denied the fact that he had all these children. And his first daughter, in fact, she came to the United States and enrolled war two. She worked for the government and she interested in. She worked as a spy. And we didn't know that until we investigated her.

[18:38] NAOMI LOVE: What did you learn?

[18:39] SONYA MILLER PREIS: I would like to learn more about her.

[18:42] NAOMI LOVE: Yeah, I'm sure.

[18:43] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah.

[18:45] NAOMI LOVE: Definitely. Sounds like an interesting life.

[18:47] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah.

[18:49] NAOMI LOVE: And so in kind of meeting some of these new family members or new to you family members, was there anything else that you were surprised to see, you know, that you maybe had in common or kind of. What was that like?

[19:05] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Well, the one thing that we did having in common was, of course, my grandfather, but we had same mannerisms. And like my cousin Carol and my cousin Blossom from Chihuahua, they had the same mannerism. Well, they had, well, my aunt passed away, but same mannerisms. And so I learned a lot. And growing up. Cause my family that I met recently, they grew up in El Paso and we had different. We were brought up differently because I was brought up Catholic and they were brought up Jewish.

[19:53] NAOMI LOVE: Oh, interesting.

[19:55] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah.

[19:56] NAOMI LOVE: You were even in the same city, but you didn't know.

[20:00] SONYA MILLER PREIS: I did. I knew because of my aunt from Chihuahua told me.

[20:04] NAOMI LOVE: Right. But I mean, that you didn't know that you were related to them.

[20:09] SONYA MILLER PREIS: No, I knew I was related to them. I didn't want to approach them. And I kind of like put it in the back of my mind until seven years ago, until a mutual friend of ours put us together.

[20:24] NAOMI LOVE: Okay. How did you feel about that as a. As a young person? Kind of knowing that and keeping it a secret.

[20:32] SONYA MILLER PREIS: You know, it. I was. I was curious, but then I wasn't curious until I got older. And then I realized I wanted to know how they were, how they thought, what they believed in, what they looked like. And then it turns out. I'll tell you something interesting. Like my aunt. We went to the same doctor. We went to the. She belonged to the same organizations as my mother in law, so we were parallel to each other, and I wasn't aware of that. And all my family went to the same doctor. And all of my cousins, I mean, all my aunt's family here in El Paso, the ones I recently met, were going to the same doctor. Isn't that interesting?

[21:35] NAOMI LOVE: That is crazy.

[21:37] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah.

[21:39] NAOMI LOVE: And so what would you want, you know, future generations of your family to know about you and about your relatives? Now that, you know, we have a fuller picture of who they are, I.

[21:52] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Want them to know that they're caring people, intelligent, very intelligent people. And there were never prejudice to anybody. And one thing is there, like my cousin Frank, he embraced the mexican culture like I do. I'm mexican. He isn't. He was 100% jewish, but he embraced it all, and so did my grandfather. And he appreciated. Well, he loved El Paso like I did, and it was a wonderful place to grow up. I still think it's a wonderful place to grow up. El Paso has so much to give. Like I said, it has flavor. We're different from any other city. Even though we're growing. We still have a. We still have a caring society where we speak to each other. We help each other. I mean, there's so much to enjoy, especially the culture, the history. Oh, we have talented people. And, of course, the food.

[23:24] NAOMI LOVE: Of course the food. No, and it's funny, I was just talking to my coworker about this. For such a big city, it does feel small, and I don't think it's. I think it's that sense of community that makes it feel smaller, because, you know, going around and talking to people, it really does feel that that is strong here.

[23:42] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah, it's a very. Yeah, it's a very strong community. And I tell you, I just. It doesn't matter where you go around the city, anybody's over. I mean, your car breaks down, there's always somebody there to help you if you need anything. There's always somebody there to open their doors. They're just gracious people and humble people. It doesn't matter economically. They're all, you know, they're very humble people. If you go anywhere you go around the city, people are welcoming.

[24:26] NAOMI LOVE: Definitely. So, since we are on this recording, is there anything else in particular that you want to share with future generations? Any words of wisdom from your own life.

[24:41] SONYA MILLER PREIS: To always look at the good where you grow up and to appreciate it. And I do it. I have appreciated where I grew up.

[24:54] NAOMI LOVE: It definitely sounds like it. It sounds like it's been a place that's loved you a lot and that you've loved, too.

[24:59] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[25:02] NAOMI LOVE: All right.

[25:03] SONYA MILLER PREIS: And I'm glad I didn't leave because all my friends who have left, they are. I mean. I mean, we have traffic issues here, but not compared to other cities.

[25:15] NAOMI LOVE: Sure. Definitely not.

[25:18] SONYA MILLER PREIS: So, no, I think El Paso is the best kept secret. And we have good weather also, and that is important.

[25:29] NAOMI LOVE: No, it's been lovely here.

[25:31] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah. Okay.

[25:35] NAOMI LOVE: All right. Well, I am so glad that you've come here and shared some of your family's history. It was so interesting to hear about. And I'm sure other members of your family in future generations will be excited to hear it, too.

[25:49] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Oh, yeah. I hope that people would learn to appreciate all Paso because I. I hear young people, they want to leave for something better. And my friends who left for something better, they got better jobs. Yes. But they want to come back here. They want to retire here. They miss their family and friends here, and they're lying up to come back.

[26:20] NAOMI LOVE: Yeah. No, that community is so important. I think especially as you get older, you realize.

[26:25] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Yeah, definitely.

[26:32] NAOMI LOVE: Well, thank you again for sharing your story and for sharing it with me. It's been so lovely.

[26:40] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Okay. Thank you. I really appreciated this, and I hope that it will help somebody in the future.

[26:50] NAOMI LOVE: I'm sure it will. There's some interesting things in here.

[26:53] SONYA MILLER PREIS: Okay, thank you.