A special night is being planned to honor a very special couple in Fountain Hills.

The Jerry and Jackie Miles Tribute Dinner will be held at the Community Center on Saturday, Feb. 20.

Jerry is a former mayor, known in the Town of Fountain Hills for his generous financial gifts for the betterment of the community, his outspokenness on various local political issues and his love for the arts.

Other than knowing he practiced law for a living, few really knew that much about his background.

He was born in Rocky Ford, Colorado. Just as he was beginning to start school, his family moved to Clayton, N.M. One of the fondest memories of his youth in Clayton was listening to Cleveland Indian and Brooklyn Dodger games on the Liberty Network with his best friend, Stanley Beckner.

They never missed when the Indian’s Bob Feller was on the mound. Jerry’s family relocated to Lamar, a small community in southeastern Colorado, just prior to beginning his high school years.

High school began with Jerry trying out for the football team. He broke his arm and he never got to play. But he did land a part in the school play and wife Jackie said he can still recite his lines. He also took journalism classes and worked on the school yearbook. He was elected president of the Southeastern Traffic Safety Board and upon returning from that group’s state convention, he was approached to be a radio personality by the station’s owner. He was on the air for 15 to 20 hours a week. Working after school and all day on Saturday, his radio show, Jerry’s Junction, began attracting regular listeners.

Upon entering college at the University of Colorado, he found he needed to make extra cash. He worked as a dishwasher, was a teletype setter operator for the school newspaper and was a cashier at a Safeway market.

Then came the day that would forever change his life. He met an attractive brunette named Jackie who was serving on a committee he chaired that was planning CU Days. One of the activities was to build a big bonfire. Jerry didn’t get a permit from the fire department and seemed surprised at the reaction he got from the firemen.

Jackie was born and raised in Denver and graduated from South Denver High School in 1955. She was a music major for 18 months at the University of Colorado before she and Jerry married and she went to work while he finished his studies there. Years later, Jackie returned to school at Cal State University Northridge and earned her Masters Degree in Communicative Disorders in 1983.

After they got married, he taught his new bride how to be a teletype setter operator. She became proficient with her new trade and that was their primary income while Jerry went to law school. They didn’t live extravagantly but during that first year of marriage, they splurged a bit on two purchases. One was a Vespa motor scooter to get around and the other was a small gibbon monkey that they named J.J.

“J.J. bonded with Jerry,” Jackie recalls. “He’d carry him on his shoulder wherever he would go.”

Jerry was always looking for ways to make money. His entrepreneurial spirit led him into buying a sandwich business. From that he rented a piece of property and put in a trampoline business.

At the outset, the profit picture jumped with every bouncing teenager. But then someone with the same type of business got sued and the trampoline businesses across the country began disappearing. So did Jerry’s.

Then there was the London double decker bus that Jerry bought in the 1970s. He was a high bidder by phone on the Channel 8 annual fund-raising auction. The bus had a bar built in it, thus it became a great party bus. He discovered that insurance was incredibly expensive, so he formed The London Bus Company, and he placed Jackie in charge of leasing it out for parties.

He got a special driver’s license so he could drive it for their kids’ birthday parties. Jackie made sure she hired drivers for the adult functions. They had the bus for three or four years and then sold it to a person in Santa Barbara.

Getting back to his roots, he became a radio announcer in Canon City, Colorado. He did it all. He was a sports announcer, he was also the music disc jockey and reported the news. One of his best memories of being a sports announcer was when he and another reporter covered a high school football game that was played in a blizzard. They couldn’t see the field for most of the game and so using some ingenuity, they began making up plays. They pulled it off and no one was the wiser.

Jerry liked the radio business and he began sending resumes to stations all over the country. He was contacted and offered an on-air position with a station in Lancaster, Calif. He heard Lancaster was near Los Angeles, so he thought very little before accepting. In his dreams, it was Hollywood here we come. Lancaster was no Hollywood and it wasn’t really that close to Los Angeles.

One evening while taking a bath, he suddenly told Jackie that he had decided to attend law school. Never one to hold back when he was pursuing something, he went straight to the UCLA law school dean’s office and asked him about the program.

To no one’s surprise, Jerry finished first in his class at UCLA. Warren Christopher, who later served as Secretary of State during President Clinton’s first term, gave Jerry his first job with a law firm. While working with the law firm, Jerry made a name for himself in the social and business communities of the Los Angeles area. He served as chairman of the USO, which put together celebrity dinners to raise money for the Bob Hope USO Center in Hollywood.

Somehow, they also found time to raise two children, daughter Judy and son Doug.

Judy graduated from Standard University and Harvard Law School and now lives in Moraga, Calif. with Renata and twin daughters, Jenna and Kate, and is a partner and legal counsel for KHP Capital Partners in San Francisco.

Doug has an M.D. and a PhD. from the University of Southern California. He did his residency at Case Western University, where he specialized in neuro-muscular medicine. Doug lives on Oahu with his wife, Aly, and their three children. Julia, Josephine and Jason. Doug is on staff at Queens Hospital and teaches at the University of Hawaii Medical School.

One summer, while Judy was in law school, she was hired by Jerry’s law firm to pick up and deliver important documents to the firm’s clients. Little did she know that most of her pickups would be to retrieve items such as brief cases, glasses, umbrellas, etc. that her father had left behind at clients’ offices.

His law career would take him to two additional firms.

In 1980, he took up the hobby of hot air ballooning. By the time he came down from his first ride, he had talked the pilot into selling the balloon to him. Jerry got his balloon pilot’s license and flew four times in the international balloon festival in Albuquerque, N.M.

In 1983 Jerry and his cousin formed a partnership to own and operate the Saguaro Lake Marina. Using his knowledge of marinas, Jerry formed Westrec Properties in 1987 and within two years this company purchased 18 marinas throughout the United States.

Because of its proximity to Saguaro Lake, Jerry and Jackie bought a home in Fountain Hills in 1985. They moved to the community permanently in 1990.

Upon settling in their new home town, Jerry felt compelled to get involved. His first major project was to help form the Neighborhood Property Owners Association. He had interacted with many well-known politicians during his law career, but running for mayor in 1994 was his first political race. In one of the state’s closest elections on record, he lost to incumbent Mayor John Cutillo by three votes! Disappointed but still determined, he ran again in 1996. This time he won the election by a good margin.

His two years in office saw the town government take steps to plan for the town’s future. A bed tax was approved giving the town an additional revenue source as the number of hotel rooms increased, the Sister Cities program began, the temporary sign ordinance was enacted and the Hillside Ordinance was established.

Although he lost his bid for re-election, he has remained active in the community. Jean Linzer, who worked for him for 17 years in California and Arizona, nominated Jerry for the Chamber of Commerce’s Business Person of the Year award.

In her letter of nomination, she said, “He has been able to take advantage of his success by giving a great deal of time and effort to the Chamber and especially to our community. Thus, as a business person he has been a leader by example in donating his time and resources. I believe Jerry exemplifies the kind of business person we want to see in our community.”

Jerry’s community activities have been numerous including service on the boards of the Library Association, Historical Society, Sunridge Foundation, Golden Eagle Foundation, River of Time Museum Foundation, Arts Council, Noon Kiwanis and the Civic Association. He has written or assisted each of those organizations with their by-laws and articles of incorporation.

And in 2011, he designed what is now known as the Centennial Circle in honor of Arizona’s 100th birthday.

Committed to transforming Fountain Hills into a public art mecca, he and Jackie have donated several pieces of public art to the town’s collection.

They firmly believe that having public art displayed creates a certain ambiance that is attractive to potential businesses that could re-locate here and it could be a town tourist attraction.

The couple have personally contributed more funds than any other individual toward the acquisition of public art in the community. It was his idea for a major fund-raising dinner that raised over $160,000 in one night for the construction of the display sets in the River of Time Museum.

In addition to receiving the Chamber’s Business Person of the Year Award, he and wife Jackie were honored by the Sunridge Foundation which awarded them with the Champions Award.

Jerry has been active as an elder with the Fountain Hills Presbyterian Church. He and Jackie sponsored three major scholarships annually for 10 years through the Golden Eagle Foundation.

Jerry Miles has indeed given much to his community and there are even more things that he has done anonymously that only the recipients of those funds are aware of.

There was little question when his nomination to the Lower Verde Valley Hall of Fame in 2005 was approved.

Jackie is also a member of the Hall of Fame having been elected in 2007. She is another tireless volunteer since coming to the community.

A former first lady of Fountain Hills, she has been a major supporter of the arts in Fountain Hills. She was the founder and first president of the Fountain Hills Arts Council (now known as the Fountain Hills Cultural & Civic Association.)

She has served on the boards of the Fountain Hills Theater and Senior Services, the Boys and Girls Club Advisory Board of Fountain Hills, the Community Center Advisory Committee and the CopperWynd Advisory Board.

She is a past president of the Noon Kiwanis Club and is the current president of the Sister Cities Corporation. Jackie was one of the Visitation Committee members who traveled to Kasterlee Belgium in 1998 to pave the way for the Kasterlee-Fountain Hills Sister Cities relationship.

Jackie was the driving force behind the holiday lighting program and the annual live poinsettia tree display, and established the In-Home Concert series which she and Jerry have hosted several times.

She is an elder with the Fountain Hills Presbyterian Church where she sings in the church choir and sometimes plays the violin.

Jerry and Jackie have made major contributions toward making Fountain Hills a better place.

“This town has become our passion,” Jerry said. “We continue to seek ways to make it even better.”

“And we have a lot of fun doing the things we do.” said Jackie.

Details of the dinner will be announced in the coming weeks.