The 'H' must have stood for 'Heart' News Utah Jazz

I never got used to writing "Larry H. Miller." It was the H. that bothered me. It didn't fit. Larry Miller was a middle initial guy about as much as John Wayne or John Stockton. Guys who prefer golf shirts to neckties and ballgames to ballets might have an initial, but they don't use it.

But over time I understood. Larry Miller couldn't be just plain Larry Miller even if he was never anything but. He did too many extraordinary things and became too rich and famous. To avoid public confusion, he simply had to go to the H. I first met him 24 years ago, when he was just Larry. He was only four years older than me, and I found it kind of amazing that at 40 he could afford to buy and finance half of the Utah Jazz Basketball franchise. A year later, I found it more amazing that he could afford to buy and finance the other half. This was back when purchasing an NBA franchise was no cinch investment, particularly not in Utah, where the team's first six years were marred by money woes that got so bad, as the old stories go, that Hot Rod Hundley was paying the gas bill. I was a sports writer then, and I remember it as clear as if it were yesterday, talking to Larry after the press conference that announced him as Jazz co-owner with Sam D. Battistone, a restaurant heir who was seeing how fast he could lose his inheritance. (Sam and Larry were more or less dead opposites when it came to handling money; Sam, as someone once observed, treated loans like income; Larry, on the other hand, treated income like loans.) Off to the side, talking to a car dealer who had no idea he was headed where he was headed, I asked Larry why he'd bought into the Jazz. He explained that he was a big sports fan, that he loved having an NBA franchise in Salt Lake City, and that the reason he was buying in wasn't because he'd consulted a crystal ball and knew the franchise would one day be worth $400 million. It was so the Jazz would never be sold to outsiders and leave the borders of the state of Utah. It was purely and simply an emotional purchase. He bought the entire state a lifetime Jazz seat. Then he delivered my all-time favorite Larry H. Miller quote: "Selling the Jazz would be like selling Canyonlands." In the wake of Larry's premature departure from this earth Friday at the age of 64, it's impossible to overstate just how much every state needs a Larry Miller ? a risk-taking, emotion-driven, rock-solid loyalist. Everywhere you look, there's his imprint. Sports. Business. Charity. Education. Media. Architecture. Utah is a far different, and far better, place because of just one man. What's difficult to believe is how he did it all so fast. Most of us manage 64 years' worth of living as long as they give us, say, 94 to do it in; Larry Miller packed 94 into 64. What I admired most about him was his loyalty to friends. And if you met him for any substantive length of time, he was your friend. Every time he opened some new venture ?? his Basketball practice facility, his racetrack, Jordan Commons, a new movie complex, the Silver Jubilee of the Miller conglomerate ? he made sure I got an invitation. "I don't care if you write anything," he'd say. "But I thought you might like to come. ... You were there when we got started." People meant way more to Larry Miller than money, or the H., or neckties, ever did. In all the years I knew him, and after all the things he accomplished, he did not change ? and he did not forget where he came from. Replace him? Forget it. Losing him is like losing Canyonlands. Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com