by Bea Peterson
U.S. Army Sgt. Kevin Miller is a man on a mission. He is co-founder of Warriors in the Bronx. On Friday, July 15, Miller was outside Weebs Fish Fry selling T-shirts and collecting donations for his project. On June 25 he rented a 12 passenger van and drove 10 wounded veterans to Yankee Stadium. The vets were given a tour of the stadium, the museum and Monument Park. “They announced our visit and put us up on the jumbotron,” said Miller. The vets watched the Yankees defeat the Colorado Rockies 8-4 from field level seats behind home plate.
Miller said the Yankees supply the game tickets. He pays for the transportation, food and non-alcoholic beverages and gives each vet a T-shirt. That amounts to between $500 and $700 a game.
The next game was July 23 against the Oakland A’s. On August 13 the Yankees play Tampa Bay and on September 3 the game is against Toronto. Any area service connected disabled veteran is welcome to come to a game. Last week Miller still had two openings for August and eight for September. To arrange for a seat or to learn more about the project, Miller can be reached at 518-858-4341 or by email kmill187@aol.com.
One Who Knows
Miller, who lives in Pittstown and is a member of the Hoosick Lions Club, served in Afghanistan in 2008 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He has an artificial lower right leg. Miller wasn’t wounded by a bomb or gun fire. His attack was much more subtle. He purchased a sealed can of chewing tobacco that was laced with cyanide and heroine. “I went to sleep in Afghanistan and woke up a month later in Walter Reed Hospital,” he said. He was in a coma and on life support from July 28 to August 24. He was told there was enough poison in half that can to kill seven men. While he was in the coma he had four cardiac arrests, received an emergency tracheotomy, had three brain bleeds, seven chest tubes, two dialysis tubes and five of his main organs shut down. Twice they drilled holes in the back of his head to release blood. As a result of the poisoning he has permanent nerve damage to 75 percent of his body.
He returned home thin as a rail and in a wheelchair on Halloween 2008. For the next year and a half he struggled to walk. But he had no feeling in the lower portion of his right leg. “It was completely dead,” he said. On March 26, last year, he agreed to a below the knee amputation. “Now I get around much better,” he said.
He gets around so well that he wants to help other veterans. And one way he can do that is to take them out to a ball game.
