America’s Dirtiest Man: How He Survived Decades Without a Single Shower

For nearly seven decades, Frank Miller, known as “America’s dirtiest man,” refused to bathe. Living in a shack on the edge of town, he survived on garbage, roadkill, and tobacco scraps, his skin layered in filth. Against all odds, he lived into his nineties, laughing at the very idea of soap. Locals whispered he wouldn’t last, but when doctors finally ran tests, the results shocked everyone…

We live in a country obsessed with cleanliness. Hand sanitizer at every counter, antibacterial wipes in every car, scented soaps in every bathroom. But tucked away in the dusty backroads of rural America lived a man who defied every expectation—and every standard. For nearly seven decades, he refused to take a bath.

His name was Frank Miller, though most people in town just called him “Grimy Frank.” He lived on the outskirts of a small Midwestern community, in a shack patched together with tin and plywood. He hadn’t touched a bar of soap in 67 years. He claimed water would make him ill. And for reasons nobody could quite explain, he stuck to that belief until his dying day.

Neighbors would sometimes catch glimpses of him wandering barefoot down dirt roads, his clothes caked stiff with grime, his beard tangled with ash. Frank smoked an old rusted pipe stuffed with whatever he could find—sometimes tobacco, often dried animal waste. He ate mostly from trash bins behind grocery stores, and if a raccoon or possum turned up dead along the roadside, he considered it dinner. To most people, he was a local legend—a recluse wrapped in layers of dirt and mystery.