How a longtime fan and a former UNC basketball star built an unlikely friendship

Larry Miller was taking a break beside the garden in his backyard, basking in June’s morning light when his past came calling, bearing two lattes and a coffee. In short order he was participating in a book project that traces the arc of his basketball career to represent a pivotal era in the sport. And, after years away, he’ll make a rare trip to North Carolina next month for a 50th reunion of Tar Heels squads that mounted a defining three-year championship run (1967-69) under Dean Smith.

Miller had returned in 2003 to Catasauqua, his hometown in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where his basketball skills made him a schoolboy legend and a top prep prospect in the mid-1960s. He was such a sensation, the locals chartered 14 buses to attend one of his freshman games at Chapel Hill, 466 miles away.

Miller won additional admirers at the University of North Carolina – as an upperclassmen in 1967 and 1968 he was a repeat All-American and ACC player of the year. In a more innocent era, before televised games became ubiquitous, before technology provided instant communication, Miller was considered a “heart-throb” in the vernacular of that time. He received three or four letters daily from appreciative fans, many of them female. “Imagine what it would be in this day and time with all the media,” muses Miller, 71.

Some correspondents enclosed socks, photos, drawings. Miller’s mother stored the mail in boxes back home, and in retirement, he toyed with the idea of publishing a compendium of charming and entertaining letters titled “Those Crazy Carolina Kids.”

Statesville’s Nancy Curlee was among his most ardent young followers. Curlee experienced a gamut of schoolgirl crushes – first the Beatles, especially Paul McCartney, followed by actor Paul Newman. Then, during a televised UNC game, the camera zoomed in as Miller attempted a free throw. The fifth-grader was smitten, arrested especially by his blue eyes and reassured by what her father praised as his “beautiful” shooting touch.

“I knew I was choosing well,” says Nancy Curlee Demorest, who took her husband’s name in later years. “The 12-year-old boy in me loved basketball. The 10-year-old girl in me loved Larry Miller.”

She and her friends were divided in their infatuations between Miller and teammate Dick Grubar. “We just thought they were gods,” says Demorest. Their Barbie dolls were paired with GI Joe to represent Miller, or Ken as a stand-in for Grubar. Nancy Demorest scribbled “Mrs. Lawrence James Miller” on school notebooks. She made scrapbooks of newspaper clippings from North Carolina’s games, saved programs others brought her.

Her devotion moved her to write a “Dear Larry” letter. “I have been a great admirer of your’s (sic) for 3 years now,” she printed in loopy cursive on stationery featuring a background of blue flowers with pale gold centers and leaves. “I know this sounds silly but could you please write me a letter so I could sort of show it off? Please do.” Then she added her name and address and signed off “Love Always, Nancy.”

Miller never responded.

Soon enough, Demorest left for college, moved to the New York area and worked, among other things, as a writer for 12 years on “Guiding Light,” the daytime soap opera. She and her husband Stephen, a magazine and fellow soap writer who won a handful of Daytime Emmys, returned to North Carolina in 1996 when she was pregnant with their third daughter.

Meanwhile, Miller enjoyed a six-year career in the American Basketball Association, followed by a life’s journey that took him to Raleigh, Virginia Beach and back again to a house a few blocks from where he grew up.

On and off the court, perhaps more than any single player, the 6-4 Miller had helped young Smith establish his Carolina program among the game’s elite. Key to the transformation, Miller picked UNC over Duke in Smith’s first head-to-head recruiting victory over Vic Bubas’ dominating Blue Devils. Miller averaged 21.8 points per game in three varsity seasons, made more than half his shots, and averaged 9.2 rebounds. Teamed with Bob Lewis and then Charles Scott, he led the Heels to the first two of Smith’s 13 ACC titles and 11 Final Fours.

Miller remained close to Smith, but kept his distance from Chapel Hill. So hero-worshipping fans found him in Catasauqua (population 6,544 in 2016), habitually arriving unannounced at his house. Among them was Nancy Demorest.

The Demorests happened to spend the night at a motel on Catasauqua Road in eastern Pennsylvania en route from a Rhode Island vacation to their Hillsborough home. Nancy recognized the name of Miller’s hometown, looked up his address and the next day, over her husband’s objections, went visiting, hot drinks in hand.

No one answered her summons at the doors of Miller’s unlocked house, not even when she stepped inside. Going around back, Nancy Demorest spotted someone seated in the yard. “She just popped up here out of the blue one day,” recalls Miller. “She’s still a little kid, I think. She’s a lot of fun. It’s all been good since she came into my life, they both did.”

Connecting was easy, Demorest says. “We had the best time. This was the strangest thing, because suddenly it was like we had known each other all our lives, which for me was true.”

She and Stephen, who’s writing the still-untitled book, have visited Miller repeatedly since, including accompanying him to a pair of high school reunions. “There was just a real sweetness to this little town and the way they celebrated him,” Nancy explains. “So (the book) is kind of tracking him through that, through Carolina, through the ABA when everything really kind of changed and real money came in. The whole sport changed during his time.”

Miller is happily assisting the book effort, though he’s unclear on the focus. “I’m kind of in the dark about it,” he admits. “I just send them whatever they need, answer any questions.”

Perhaps most important, at least for his once-enraptured fan from Statesville, Miller hasn’t disappointed. “Larry’s still cute,” says Nancy Curlee Demorest.

This story was originally published December 11, 2017 at 2:11 PM with the headline "How a longtime fan and a former UNC basketball star built an unlikely friendship."