Family Counting Blessings as Son Overcomes Brain Injury

(Picayune Item) – Nov. 24 was the most thankful Thanksgiving ever for the family of Picayune’s Gavin Miller.

Just a week before, a hit-and-run driver crashed into the 17-year-old as he was walking to a school bus stop. A resulting head injury left his mother, Hesper Miller, worrying: “Is he going to be like himself afterwards?”

“He’d wake up, and it would just be a blank stare,” she said. “Thanksgiving day was his first good day. He was awake and alert and I said: ‘There he is, that’s my kid.’ He was making little jokes, and I was so happy.”

It was the morning of Nov. 17 when Miller fielded a heart-stopping phone call. “They said, ‘We don’t know what happened, but he was found in a ditch with lots of plastic around him.’ They didn’t say anything about the seriousness. They said it’s possible he has a head injury.” CONTINUE