Tracy Miller learned on a Sunday night last November that her son, Marine Cpl. Nicholas Ziolkowski, was killed during the battle for Fallujah in Iraq.

Now, as a legacy to Nick, the 55-year-old Miller, an avowed pacifist since her high school peace demonstration days, is running for the House of Delegates.

"I look at his picture and he's 22 and he's gorgeous, and he's never going to get any older," said Miller, who is divorced and lives in Ruxton Crossing. "But to sit around moping for what might have been is not what Nick would have wanted.

"What I think I have to do is to make those 22 years mean something."

There was, she said, "essentially a logical progression" to the journey that began with Nick' s death and ended with her filing July 7 for one of the three 42nd District seats in the House to represent Towson, Lutherville, Timonium and part of Pikesville.

A Democrat, Miller, who holds a master's degree in writing from Towson University and a bachelor's degree in American history and technical theater from the University of Wisconsin, has never run for office.

She has worked for Towson University for 27 years, is an academic adviser and coordinates the domestic student exchange program. She also teaches English and American studies courses and is a trained mediator.

Being a peacemaker comes naturally. "When I was a girl, my parents would sit me in the middle of the back seat of the car to keep my brother and sister from fighting," she said.

Nick had joined the Marines in 2001 - shortly after graduating from Boys' Latin - against her wishes but with her support. Being a Marine and serving his country was what he wanted most. "His views were clearly influenced by his grandfather, who fought in the Polish army during World War II," she said.

She has never forgotten a conversation she had with Nick.

"I remember where we were," she said. "It was the intersection of Thornton Road and Seminary Avenue."

"You're such a sensitive guy," she said to him. "I can't understand why you would join the military and try to hurt somebody."

"I don't want to hurt people," Nick said. "I want to help them."

"Look around you," he said. "Don't you see how beautiful this is? I want to make sure it's still here for my children and my grandchildren."

While Nick wanted peace and to make the world a better place, Miller says, he also said if there was action anywhere, he wanted in on it. He told his mother that if anything were to happen to him, she should know he was doing what he wanted to do.

Miller was overwhelmed when he was killed.

Nick was a natural leader, she said, blessed with a contagious good nature, and he had been an incredible coach for her. She would be on the way out the door and he'd say, "Mom, you need a scarf with that dress." After she began working out at Curves, he'd tell her she was looking good.

She still struggles with his death. "I don't want to make my home into a shrine," she said. "But I think every time I read a newspaper and see somebody else's son has been killed, I cry all over again."

She spent a considerable amount of time thinking about what she could do.

"I wanted to make both of my sons proud of me, to live my life doing good," she said."It has always been important to me to help people. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

That was the beginning of the process.

Next came the course she taught at TU in January on The Sixties. It was the same course she had taught last fall. "Thank God I had gotten past Vietnam before Nick died," she said. "If I had had to talk about Vietnam a lot, I couldn't have."

When she teaches, she tries to personalize the subject, Miller said. At Wisconsin, the military draft wa! s something to avoid. "It has always been very real to me," she said. "I knew people who were afraid of being drafted, people who were drafted and ran, people who came back."

She tries to make students understand these were not faceless soldiers. They were people their age, college students who didn't want to be there, fighting in the jungle, dying.

"I was teaching students you can change the world and you must change the world," she said. "I realized I had to practice what I was preaching."

In February, she was lobbying for the Citizens Planning and Housing Association and the League of Women Voters in Annapolis when she concluded that she could play an important role in the state legislature herself.

"I had this 'eureka' moment," she said. "This is what I could do - and I would be good at it. I care passionately about a lot of things that affect the community."

She had no clue about how to set about running for office, but she made phone calls, she sought advice! and she filed for office on the first day she could - July 7. Now she 's going door to door.

The incumbent 42nd District delegates are Republicans Susan Aumann, Bill Frank and John Trueschler. Miller and Towson attorney Andy Belt, a Democrat, are the only two candidates who have filed to run for delegate in the district, according to the State Board of Elections' July 29 posting.

Will Miller change the world? "I do believe it can be done," she said. "But you need to put yourself on the line to do it.

"Maybe I'll become cynical, but right now I'm not. I think I can make a difference. And I know Nick would say, 'Go for it.'