THE MARINE:
He ran.
He ran as hard as he could. He’d always been fast, but running in the sand was a whole ‘nother thing. His calves burned and felt like they’d cramp up any second. But it felt good to hurt. It felt good to feel anything.
So he ran harder.
He thought about the first time he’d come down here. He’d worn his boots right down to the water. What a kook. Who’d wear boots to the beach? But that was then. Now he had his trunks on, and his feet were bare.
He rounded the bluff and saw the tent. Thank God for that tent. Something changed when he saw that tent. Something about the guy’s picture on the side, the surfboards, all the people. It was like he’d just shucked a thirty pound pack; he could breathe again.
“Jimmy was one of the first lifeguards I worked with. He was so smart and such an amazing teacher.”
Carly Rogers, LA County Lifeguard
“We called him our golden child. He was always a little different from everyone else. He learned faster, he climbed higher, he was more sensitive; giving. He traveled every summer of his life, exploring the world with his surfboard. We thought he was the luckiest kid in the world. Everyone wanted to come back in their second life as Jimmy.”
Nancy Miller, Jimmy’s mom
“He was definitely a brother I looked up to.”
Jeff Miller, Jimmy’s brother
THE GIRL:
She dragged her finger slowly through the dirt, drawing little pictures. They didn’t mean anything; just stupid pictures. But when she drew, she couldn’t hear them.
They were talking to her now, she knew that, but she couldn’t hear them, not really. She couldn’t even really see them. They were kind of like shadows, or ghosts, not really people. Pretty soon, they’d be gone.
Sometimes she just got that way, where people weren’t really there. They couldn’t hurt her when they weren’t there. They couldn’t touch her like that when they weren’t there. She was safe when they weren’t there.
“It was truly Jimmy’s joy and his passion to teach kids to surf.”
Nancy Miller
“Jim was really tied into the local surfing community. Teaching people how to surf, and having his surf company, it was part of his ‘being’.”
Jeff Miller
“He loved working with the kids and the kids just loved it.”
Nancy Miller
THE MARINE
He’d just come from the shrink. He hated that; not the shrink so much, just being there. All he wanted to do was talk about Iraq. Fuck Iraq! Iraq was bullshit! Talking was bullshit! He was sick of talking. Talking didn’t help a God damned thing. He had to do something, not talk.
So he ran.
Sometimes he wished he could run right out of his skin.
“Jimmy was always like a soul missionary, you know. With Jimmy it was never just, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ It was always a really good conversation, it had depth.”
Carly Rogers
“He felt pretty lonely. I’ll never know when things began to change.”
Nancy Miller
THE GIRL:
These people wouldn’t hurt her. They were always really nice. But other people had been nice too.
She was tired and the hill was too big. Didn’t they ever get tired? Small people didn’t get tired like she did. Even the teachers didn’t get tired like she did. But she was bigger than most of the teachers. She was bigger than most everybody.
“I remember Easter sitting around going, ‘You know, Jimmy seems a little off, but not really thinking anything of it.”
Jeff
“I’d been lifeguarding at a tower one day and he’d grown his beard out long and he just seemed a little heavy.”
Carly
“Around Labor Day we got phone call from his girlfriend and she said, “Jimmy’s just not right. He thinks people are after him, he sees things.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
He could only play video games for so long. And TV was crap. It was all bullshit. Why even get out of bed? None of it mattered. But just sitting there made him crazy. He couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t even read a God-damned newspaper. None of it mattered anymore. None of it!
“I’d heard some things.”
Carly
“It was just so quick.”
Jeff
“He called me and said, “Mom, this is the last day of my life.
Nancy
THE GIRL:
It didn’t really matter. Nobody cared. They never had. Not really. Why should they? They only wanted to do stuff. They didn’t care about her. Why should anybody care about anybody?
So she sat, and drew her pictures.
“By this time people knew. Jimmy wasn’t Jimmy. We didn’t keep it private. I don’t know that was a good thing ultimately. Who knows? We just begged for help anyway we could get it.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
His head was a mess. He knew that. He just couldn’t clear it.
What happened? He used to fish, and ride his Harley, and fix that piece of shit Chevy. He used to do stuff. What happened?
“It was just spiraling, craziness every day.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
He’d known guys, good soldiers, tough guys, who just couldn’t take it anymore. They just couldn’t un-see it.
“We were going to a friend’s house for dinner. He said he’d been for a run and was going to take a shower and would meet us over there. I said, “Great.”
Nancy
THE GIRL:
So she sat quietly in her own world, locked away in the silence. It didn’t really matter if anybody liked her here. It didn’t even matter if they knew she was here at all. It was safe here, and somehow, it felt warm, comfortable. Maybe she’d just stay here.
“We were 5 minutes away. When he didn’t show up I said to my husband, ‘I don’t feel good about this, let’s leave.’
Nancy
THE MARINE:
He used to think they were chicken-shit. Now he knew better.
“We came home and opened the door. And we found him.”
Nancy Miller, Jimmy’s mother
AFTER
THE GIRL:
“Come on, it’s not that far. We’ll help you.”
She could hear them, just barely. That was weird. Usually she couldn’t hear them at all.
It was that hill. They wanted her to go up that hill. It was too hard. She was tired. Why did they even go on these hikes?
“Remember that time you went surfing? That was hard too, remember? But you did it.”
Yeah, that was hard.
“Everyone said, ‘What do we do? How can we help?’ We knew we had to do something in Jimmy’s name.
Nancy
“We wanted to do something but we weren’t really sure what that something was.”
Jeff
“Everyone knew it was going to be surf related.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
It was the laughter. That’s what got him.
Most of these guys had never laughed, at least not while he’d known them. Why would they? They’d seen too much. They’d seen shit most people couldn’t imagine. Bad shit. There wasn’t much funny after that.
But now they’d come back to the barracks just cracking up, laughing like a bunch of school girls. What was that all about?
“I remember Carly talking about a program she’d been working on.”
Jeff
“I’d created the Ocean Therapy Program while at USC. Basically, by using surfing as the catalyst, we’d do this physical activity that’s daring and dynamic, but also has the supportive outcome with the help of the instructor.”
Carly Rogers, Occupational Therapist
THE GIRL:
It was like that lady at the beach that time. She wanted her to go in the water. That lady was crazy. Big girls don’t wear bathing suits. And they sure don’t go in the ocean.
“We had an idea and now we needed a group to work with.”
Jeff
“One of the board members just so happened to have a cousin who worked at a place called Hollygrove.”
Carly
“Hollygrove had been an orphanage in Hollywood, in fact Marilyn Monroe was an orphan at Hollygrove. At that time it was a live-in facility for foster kids who couldn’t make it in any other facility. These were majorly abused kids.”
Jeff
THE GIRL:
But the lady had kept at it. And she was so nice.
“We rounded up some volunteers and we gave them some training; the same method that Jimmy taught through his CampSurf.”
Nancy
THE GIRL:
So she’d gotten the bathing suit on. It took awhile. It was funny really; it was too small, everything was too small, but the lady didn’t make fun of her or anything. She didn’t even really make her do it. She just kept saying how much fun it was going to be.
“Our first group was like 10 or 12 kids and probably 30 volunteers, way too many volunteers because everyone wanted to be there. Most of these kids had never even seen the ocean.”
Nancy
THE GIRL:
And it was fun. The lady helped her lay on the surfboard. It was hard, a lot harder than it looked. But the lady helped her. She was nice.
“It was a beautiful, warm sunny day and all of a sudden there were 10 little kids surfing. It was just so crazy. People were cheering on the beach.”
Nancy
THE GIRL:
The ocean was crazy! The way it moved and bounced her around. But it was so fun. It made her laugh. She hadn’t laughed in a long time.
“One of the main tenets of Ocean Therapy is that if you can accomplish this goal of surfing, which you never thought you would do, you can apply this to your math homework, to whatever else in your life that you think you can’t accomplish; that you can do it, with some help.”
Jeff
“It’s just life changing. People can’t believe that they can just go down and go surfing and see the difference in the life in a child from 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock. It totally changes affect and how they relate with others.”
Nancy
“You make that trust connection. If you are open to someone helping you, you know, you trust them, which is a major issue for some of these kids, that you can accomplish your goal. It’s like pushing the rock up the hill; with some help and some encouragement, you can accomplish it. It’s the muscle memory, even thought the muscle is your brain, it makes a difference.”
Jeff
“We’re up to like 20 sessions now, every summer. And we’ve had some of the same kids for years and we’re getting to know them. The teenage kids are aging out and they’re on their way to their first job or to school. We get this constant feedback saying the kids who have gone through this program are the kids that are the most successful; the one’s with the most confidence; the ones that have made a total 360 in their personal life.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
He grabbed a board as he ran by tent. Carly yelled something but he couldn’t hear it. It didn’t really matter. It had to be something like, “Go for it!”
“We had a real good idea of where the kids were, but to take it to adults…”
Nancy
“This was a newly formed thing, a unit for wounded active military to recuperate both physically and mentally.
Jeff
“We got a meeting with the Wounded Warriors Battalion at Camp Pendleton.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
He hadn’t gone for it in a long time.
Not till these guys came along; with their tent, and their surfboards, and their kum-ba-yah sessions.
“Afterward we’d come out of the water and talk about it to hone in the effects.”
Carly
“They all said, ‘You’re not going to get these guys to talk.’ These are hardened Marines. They just don’t talk about their feelings.”
Nancy
“By the end of the day everyone was just whooping and hollering and laughing.”
Nancy
“These guys are opening up to us, complete strangers.”
Jeff
“The Marines really articulate what it’s about.”
Carly
“Their case workers are saying things like, ‘God, this is eye opening. They’re talking to you guys about stuff they don’t talk to us about.”
Jeff
“It was them telling some knarly war story and me telling a surf story.”
Jeff
“It was just great.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
But he was going for it today. He hit the water running.
“The mission is to help people with physical and mental injuries to cope and overcome them. The idea is if you have physical injuries, like the guys in the Marines; these can lead to the mental (issues), because you’re not doing the things you love.
Jeff
“These guys now believe they can go to school. They now believe the can get out and do new sports. They now believe they can engage better with their family. There is hope after disability.”
Carly
THE MARINE:
It was cold but he didn’t feel it, not the cold anyway. He felt the water. God, it felt good. What was it about the water? He’d read somewhere that the ocean water has the same makeup as the water in your body. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was bullshit. He didn’t care. He felt alive.
“The Marines say this is the most successful recreational program they have. They’ve done the follow up, before surfing and after surfing, based on their own views of self-efficacy.”
Nancy
“Every time we have at least one person say, “I haven’t had this much fun since my injury.” It really changes their perspective.”
Carly
THE MARINE:
He jumped on the board and paddled. Until a couple of weeks ago he’d never even thought about going in the ocean, much less riding a surfboard. Now he could stand up; sometimes ride it all the way to the beach. Who would have thought?
“… we cultivate this community and it’s comfortable and it’s warm and it’s supportive and it’s around the ocean. It’s just amazing.”
Carly
“We were just sitting on the beach saying we can’t believe what this looks like. How it could just change so many lives.”
Nancy
“The volunteers, in my mind, get way more out of it. Pushing a kid into his first wave is a life changing thing if you’ve never done it.”
Jeff
THE GIRL:
And then one of the waves caught her. She could feel it rise up and then all of a sudden she was racing toward the beach. She hung on with everything she had.
She could hear herself screaming, but it was a good scream, like a laugh that had so much laugh in it, it couldn’t come out. So it screamed.
The surfboard bounced and turned and tried to throw her off, but she didn’t fall off. She rode it all the way to the beach.
Her heart was pumping real fast now as she thought about that wave. She could almost feel the water, even sitting here in the dirt.
She smiled.
“Some people say, ‘Oh, it’s just a water program, or it’s just surf lessons.’ But it’s so much more than that.”
Carly
THE GIRL:
It seemed so hard at first, you know, to go in the ocean, to ride a surfboard, to even put the bathing suit on. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t that hard at all. It was fun.
She stopped drawing and looked up. She could hear them again. And see them. They were nice people.
She looked up at the hill. It wasn’t that far.
“At the end, Jimmy had all these ‘should have’s’. ‘Why was it all about me? I should have created a foundation to help kids.’ It’s something he wanted so much; it was so dear to his heart. And now it is.”
Nancy
THE MARINE:
He saw the wave coming. It was a big one, one that used to scare the shit out of him. Not anymore. All you’ve got to do is know how to do it. And they’d taught him how to do it.
He smiled. Bring it on.
It got bigger as it got close. It was almost on top of him as it started to break. He pushed the board’s nose down with all his might.
The water rushed over him; and his mind cleared.
“For us, as a family, it’s helped. I know it’s helped my mom and dad. But now that I have daughters, the thing that eats at me is that they’ll never get to meet my brother. That’s what keeps me up at night.”
Jeff
Editor’s note: The Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation was created by family and friends in 2004, shortly after Jimmy’s death.
Through the Ocean Therapy Program, it continues to serve at-risk youth and the Wounded Warrior Battalion of the United States Marines.
Jimmy’s legacy lives on in the lives of the thousands of children and servicemen whose lives continue to improve, one wave at a time.