Bob Miller told his wife he loved her on his way out the door, an out-of-character move, but his son Rick said, “Dad knew.” He knew the risk his workday posed, a day that would be later known as the 1974 Canyonville slide.

On Jan. 16, 1974, a group of men from Pacific Northwest Bell Co. and Sage Pipeline Co. worked to repair a severed coaxial telephone cable between Portland and Sacramento — cut by an earlier slide — when the equipment hut they were in collapsed from a landslide caused by pouring rains.

Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of the event in which nine men died; one man was never found.

Miller worked as a splicer for Pacific Northwest Bell Co. and was found dead on Jan. 20, 1974, four days after the slide. His kids, Rick and Linda, were 19 and 22 at the time.

“It didn’t really sink in for months. I just felt like I had to focus on my mom and I didn’t really concern myself with me until it was months later,” Rick Miller said. “There was one night I just sat down and just started crying.”

At the time he was attending school in Klamath Falls at Oregon Institute of Technology, and had only returned for a matter of weeks, following a Christmas break with his family. After an evening out with his girlfriend, he was met with a message at his dorm to meet with someone. That’s when he found out.

His sister, Linda Fickes, was married and living in Alameda, California, when her dad died. It wasn’t until she drove by the scene in Canyonville that it fully sunk in.

“I really struggled; it was the first major loss I’d had in my life. To go suddenly, you don’t get the chance to say anything, it had a major impact on me. Through the years it took me quite a while to come to terms with it,” Fickes said. “You never get over it. Now it pops up or other times during the year it’ll pop up, but you get to where you just don’t go into that broken down, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to survive.’”

Tons of mud, rocks and trees rushed down upon the 10-by-20-foot concrete repeater hut, which threw half of the hut into Canyon Creek and buried the rest. It “pulverized the eight-inch-thick concrete block walls of the hut,” according to Sage Pipeline Co. workers in an article from The News-Review in 1974.

The day after, three men — Roy James, Robert Keller and Mark Garoutte Jr. — were found dead downstream and excavating operations began.

“There may be some we never find,” Douglas County Sheriff John Truett told The News-Review at the time.

In the following days more bodies were found. Ed Waldron was found eight-and-a-half miles downstream in the South Umpqua River via jet boat search. On Jan. 20, Bob Miller, William Centers, William Combs and Gilbert Maret were located.

On Jan. 23, the last man missing — Raymond Bell — was deemed to unlikely be in the slide area. Search efforts were ended the following day.

“There is such a point in any effort such as this, which has been intensive for the past seven days, when you know you have done everything possible,” Truett told The News-Review at the time.

Fickes said she remembers her dad as quiet guy who always had fun. He was the type of dad with spontaneity, piling all the kids up in the car to drive off on an adventure.

“He would’ve done anything for his family to tell you the truth,” Fickes said.

Rick Miller said he felt his dad always wanted a sporty kid, but Rick was a bookworm. He recounted a fond memory of being unable to complete a week-long Boy Scouts backpacking trip. His dad took a week off from work so the two could complete what he started.

“I don’t want people to forget why those guys were there,” Miller said. “This was them trying to do the right thing and doing their job, and getting caught up in something that was out of their control.”

What started as day of work, ended with an imprint on families’ lives of everlasting grief. For the Miller family, it’s been years of coming to terms with loss of their father.

“(Grief) is one of those things I’ve learned from experiences that it comes in waves and you have to roll with the waves,” Fickes said. “If you fight them, it will be much longer before you start back up again.”