Updated:
February 22, 2007
he Glenwood Hotel, and later, the Mission Inn, was a family-run business. Parents, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, in-laws, children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, all worked at the hotel. They served in a variety of capacities and often had roles in the annual Nativity Play performed in the Cloister Music Room. Frank Miller portrayed Father Serra, a fitting role for the patriarch of the Mission Inn (Klotz, 1982).
Family hotel experience was not limited to the Glenwood Hotel or Mission Inn. Miller gained experience operating other hotels in California, including ones in Pomona, Long Beach, and Lake Tahoe, while still owning the Glenwood (Klotz, 1982). His sister, Alice, and her husband, Frank Richardson, managed the hotel in Pomona, as well as the Tahoe Tavern (Klotz, 1982). For a short period, Miller even leased the Glenwood to Alice. She continued to serve as manager of the hotel for fifty years.
Miller’s active participation in the hotel business led to his election in 1896 as president of the Southern California Hotel Association (Klotz, 1982). He secured a permit to build a hotel in the newly established Yosemite National Park, but this dream remained unfilled (Klotz, 1982).
Miller’s younger brother, Edward, managed the Glenwood Stables, and later, the Glenwood Garage. The hotel maintained a fleet of nine Stearns/Knight automobiles. Frank Miller never learned to drive a car, himself (Klotz, 1982). Ed drove to Colton to pick up guests at the train station. When John D. Rockefeller arrived in 1884, Frank Miller accompanied Edward on the short trip to Colton (Gale, 1938).
Daughter Allis managed the Cloister Art Shop (Klotz, 1982). Guests could purchase several publications related to the Mission Inn authored by Mission Inn curator Francis Borton, Allis, and her husband, DeWitt Hutchings. Following her father’s death, Allis took a more active role in the operation of the hotel along with her husband, DeWitt Hutchings. DeWitt became the Managing Director in 1938 (Klotz, 1982). In his will, Frank Miller had requested "that the operation of the Inn should be carried on by the family so that the spiritual as well as the material needs of the guests may be served" (Klotz, 1982, p. 95).
In addition, Miller asked that his grandson, Frank Miller Hutchings, participate in the management of the hotel for at least eleven years (Koltz, 1982, p. 95). After the deaths of Allis and DeWitt Hutchings and declining revenues, Frank Miller’s three grandchildren sold the hotel in 1956. |
