June 10 was traumatic for many people in the Washington area and beyond, but it was an "earth-shattering day" for Rabbi Tamara Miller, director of spiritual care at George Washington University Hospital in the District.

That was the day an 88-year-old white supremacist, apparently on a suicide mission, had shot and severely wounded U.S. Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen Johns. He was rushed to the GWU Hospital emergency room, where Miller and other chaplains kept vigil with the Johns family and friends.

"A veil of harmony and community was covered with tears and tenderness," Miller wrote in her account, which was published June 25 on The Washington Post's Web site. It ended on a tragic note: "Stephen Tyrone Johns died in the Divine arms of the medical personnel. His young life truncated by a shotgun powered by evil. The mourning has just begun."

Five days after those words appeared, the following words appeared on hospital letterhead: "Dear Rabbi Miller, effective July 31, 2009, your employment with The George Washington University Hospital is terminated due to misconduct."

Her transgression? Writing the article without proper authorization, according to the hospital administration, and also granting a brief interview to the Post after Johns' June 19 funeral, which she had attended.

Miller's formal demand that she be reinstated was rejected by the hospital earlier this week, according to her attorney, and she is now contemplating filing suit to get her job back. A spokesperson for the hospital said he was prohibited from discussing the controversy because it is a personnel matter.

Each of Miller's Johns-related communications, the hospital maintains, violated policies governing patient privacy, including HIPPA, the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

"I was stunned and dismayed; it was surreal," Miller, 62, said of her firing, which culminated an eight-year career at the hospital. "I thought, 'I can't believe they're not proud of me; I made the hospital look good.' "

Two former colleagues of Miller's were incredulous over her termination (a current hospital employee declined comment, however), and two religious leaders wrote letters to the hospital protesting Miller's ouster, one of them expressing "disbelief and dismay" over her dismissal.

Miller said she received no severance pay and was informed shortly after she got her termination notice that she had roughly 10 minutes to clean out her desk and leave the building.

Miller and her attorney, Lynne Bernabei, maintain that the alleged privacy violation was a convenient pretext used to jettison her because she had complained that the hospital's pay scale discriminated against women.

By writing the essay -- headlined "Holocaust comes to the ER" -- Miller said she was trying to cope with the wrenching events she had witnessed in the emergency room on June 10. "I was in my own post-traumatic phase; I was weeping a lot. I was having nightmares and I had to see a therapist," she said in an interview last week. "It just poured out of me."

As Miller pointed out in the article, the bigotry-fueled assault at the museum (and its immediate aftermath) struck a deep chord within her because she is a "first-generation American Jew" who lost several family members in the Holocaust.

It was also reminiscent, she said in the interview, of the so-called Greensboro massacre of 1979, in which five social justice activists were shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party in Greensboro, N.C., during a rally on behalf of industrial workers, most of them black.

Miller was living in Greensboro at the time, and one of those wounded in the attack was a man she had grown up with in the Bronx, N.Y. His parents were both Holocaust survivors. "This brought me back 30 years," she said of the June 10 incident. "I was still experiencing the same panic and suffering."

Miller initially had no intention of trying to get the essay published. "I wrote it for myself," she explained. But Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom-The National Synagogue in the District, who also attended Johns' funeral, suggested she submit the essay as a guest column for the Post's "On Faith" section, Miller recalled, and she followed his advice. "I didn't think anything of it," she added.

According to the hospital administration, Miller violated HIPAA by mentioning in the essay Johns' name, that he was treated in an operating room and that he subsequently died. Miller, who said she is well-acquainted with HIPAA, maintained that there was no infraction because Johns' name and many other details surrounding the museum attack were public knowledge.

By granting the interview to the Post at the funeral, Miller violated both HIPAA and hospital policy that prohibits staffers from talking to the media without first contacting the administration, according to the hospital.

Miller was quoted as telling the Post: "I felt compelled to come here today, not just as a rabbi, but as a Jewish person who gave comfort and care that was a light on what was a very dark day."

Miller said that when she provided that quote, she was "not conscious" of the internal policy banning unauthorized contacts with the press. "Was it on the front burner of my mind? No."

(One of her former hospital colleagues, who asked not to be named, said she, too, was unaware of the policy, and was "shocked" at Miller's firing.)

On June 11, the day after the museum shooting, the hospital administration issued an e-mail "specifically reminding" employees that they "are not to talk to the media about anything," according to an internal hospital document issued July 24 that said ignorance of the rule "is not an acceptable excuse." Violations could result in termination, the document said.

(Miller was suspended on July 27, pending investigation of the alleged privacy violations.)

Asked last week if she remembered the June 11 reminder, Miller said: "That was the day after I experienced tragedy. Did I read it? I was a little disoriented at work that day. Did I pay attention to it?"

Arguing on behalf of her client, Bernabei said Miller "did not seek out the reporter with whom she spoke [at the funeral]. In addition, she was attending the funeral as a private citizen -- not in her capacity as a hospital employee -- and therefore believed she was in compliance with the hospital's policy regarding media contact."

The Johns' family minister, Pastor John McCoy of the Word of God Baptist Church in the District, said in an interview that he was "appalled" to learn that Miller had been terminated. "I thought it was such an injustice because she was so helpful to the family on the day of the tragedy and she's been so supportive since then. She represents the hospital in an excellent way."

In a letter supporting Miller that McCoy fired off to the hospital's CEO, Trent Crable, he said: "You can imagine my disbelief and dismay when I learned ... that the essay about the events surrounding the death of our beloved Stephen had in any way contributed to her termination." McCoy said he and Johns' widow, Zakiah, "were very touched" by the essay and its "honest, emphatic voice."

He added in bold type: "This article did not in any way violate our privacy. On the contrary, we were glad that this viewpoint was put out into the world." (Zakiah Johns could not be reached for comment.)

Herzfeld also protested Miller's firing in a letter to Crable, dated Aug. 20, in which he termed her ouster "wrong and unjust," adding: "I am disappointed that her outstanding and exemplary work is rewarded by you with immediate termination."

Charlotte Ritchie, a minister from Ft. Washington and a former subordinate of Miller's at the hospital, said she was "very surprised at that kind of outcome. It was very harsh to be escorted off the premises like that. I believe they could have handled it with a little more professionalism."

She added: "I compliment Rabbi Miller on the content of her article. It was a side that only she could share because of her background. It showed that her concern extended beyond the walls of the hospital."

Regardless of the stated reason for Miller's firing, Bernabei contends that her dismissal was payback for her client's complaints about alleged pay inequities at the hospital.

In late 2007 or early 2008, Bernabei said in a Sept. 14 letter to the hospital administration, Miller informed her supervisors that she was earning roughly $20,000-$30,000 less per year than her male chaplaincy counterparts in the area. She repeatedly asked for a raise to equalize the situation, but was turned down, Bernabei reported.

The letter said the hospital soon "began to retaliate" against Miller by "manufacturing a false record of poor performance." (Miller had received an overall rating of "exceptional" in her mid-year progress review covering the period April-October 2008, shortly before the alleged smear campaign began.)

During the next several months, according to Bernabei's letter, Miller was wrongly accused of a range of performance shortcomings, including "inattention to duties," "failure to communicate" and "failure to follow her supervisor's direction."

Said Miller: "They were trying to get rid of me, and apparently this was the straw that broke the camel's back. So give me a warning or say, 'Don't do it again.' I mean, does the crime really fit the punishment? As President Obama might say, it was stupid."