General William “Bud” M Miley  was born 26 December 1897 at Fort MacArthur, CA, the youngest child of Colonel John D. Miley and Sara M. Miley, from a family of five generations of U S Army officers, with both grandfathers as West Point graduates, as were his father, brother, uncle and son.

Fort Miley, which protected the Golden Gate entry into San Francisco Bay was named after his father, and according to Mrs. Juanita Hall, General Miley’s sister-in-law, General Miley, as a boy, used to play in the sand hills that surrounds the Fort Miley boundary.

General Miley graduated from West Point in June 1918. As a cadet, Miley was the

national intercollegiate champion as a tumbler, as well as an acrobat on the rings and

parallel bars.

Upon graduation, he joined the First Division in France. After a series of

military assignments, he married Julian A Sudduth. After a tour of duty at Langley Field, VA, he became Athletic Director at West Point, before he saw duty in Panama, Fort Sam Houston, TX and the Phillipine Islands.

In 1940, then Major Miley was ordered to organize and command the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion and was promoted to Lt. Colonel shortly thereafter to command the 503rd Parachute Infantry, the first parachute regiment formed. He was then moved to Camp Claiborne. LA , to become Assistant Division Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Early in 1943, he coordinated the forming of the 17th Airborne Division at Camp Mackall to command it during training and in combat.

After the war, he commanded the 11th Airborne Division in Japan and at Fort Campbell, KY. He organized, and was Director of the Joint Airborne Troop Board that formulated future airborne parachute plans in techniques, organizations, equipment and doctrine.

He was Commander, US Army Alaska before retiring in 1955 while Chief of Staff of the Continental army Command at Fort Monroe, VA.

After retirement, he joined the brokerage firm of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and

Beane before his final retirement to Starkville, MS in 1976. General Miley died in 1998 at the ripe old age of nearly 100 years.