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    Miller Time: The Story of John Miller, a Small-Town Basketball Coach Who Inspired Dynasties
    Miller Time: The Story of John Miller, a Small-Town Basketball Coach Who Inspired Dynasties
    Miller Time: The Story of John Miller, a Small-Town Basketball Coach Who Inspired Dynasties
    Ebook414 pages8 hours

    Miller Time: The Story of John Miller, a Small-Town Basketball Coach Who Inspired Dynasties

    By David A. Burhenn and John Calipari

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    About this ebook

    Arizona. Kentucky. Indiana. It’s astounding to think that three elite college basketball programs can trace their success back to one small-town high school coach, Blackhawk High’s legendary John Miller.
    Coach John Miller was just following his heart’s passion and channeling his unbreakable spirit when in the early 1970s he began to use basketball as a platform for developing young players and future leaders. Little could he have known that his two sons, Sean and Archie Miller, and their cousin, John Calipari, would grow up to lead historic basketball programs to national prominence. And over his career, he also inspired countless other young players, who would grow up to become doctors, lawyers, and prominent CEOs. At his retirement in 2005, Coach Miller’s record stood at 657–280 over his thirty-five-year career, making him one of the winningest coaches in high school basketball history.
    Today, Coach Miller’s legacy extends from the tiny hamlet of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to some of the most famous sporting venues in America. He is a legend in the sport, praised by greats such as Kobe Bryant, Thad Matta, Bucky Waters, and Jamie Dixon.
    Filled with original photos and behind-the-scenes stories, Miller Time is for every hardwood aficionado.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSports Publishing
    Release dateMar 20, 2018
    ISBN9781683581901
    Miller Time: The Story of John Miller, a Small-Town Basketball Coach Who Inspired Dynasties
    Author

    David A. Burhenn

    David A. Burhenn was born and raised in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Fascinated with the overwhelming success of the Miller family in basketball and other pursuits, and especially after witnessing the positive effect that Coach John Miller had on his son and others, he decided to try to uncover the secret to the coach's success. Thus, his writing career began. Burhenn lives with his family in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.

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      Book preview

      Miller Time - David A. Burhenn

      CHAPTER 1

      POLIO: STARTING AT THE BASELINE

      Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.

      —C. S. Lewis

      Setting: Village of Glenwillard, seventeen miles from Pittsburgh, 1950

      John Miller’s earliest recollections include a real life battle—a desperate fight—one that didn’t look so good in the beginning.

      It’s the midpoint of the twentieth century. A six-year-old John is lying in bed, feeling miserable. He is burning up with a persistent fever that continues to climb. His parents, Joe and Catherine, assume he’s caught the flu or some other common childhood infection. But even after waiting many days, the fever won’t go away. Days, a week, two weeks go by. Finally John’s parents, first concerned and now worried sick, have had enough.

      Joe carefully lays his son down in the back of their Ford Prefect. His mom stares distantly out the car window as they drive through Glenwillard, the small, tough town they call home. Familiar buildings and houses pass by.

      Patti Page’s Tennessee Waltz is playing on the radio. Joe switches it off; no one is really listening anyway. Anxious thoughts race through everyone’s heads. What could be wrong with John?

      Finally, the family arrives at their destination, the family doctor’s office. After a thorough examination, Dr. Robert D. Nix is confused and at a loss as to what the illness could be. A brilliant man, he was one of the doctors who had worked with Dr. Jonas Salk to create the polio vaccine. He saw some signs that he didn’t like, and he recommended that the Millers see some specialists at the nearby Sewickley Hospital in Sewickley, Pennsylvania.

      It’s only about an eight-minute drive that winds down Crescent Avenue along the Ohio River and across the Sewickley Bridge, but it seems much longer. When the family finally reaches their destination, the best doctors in the area check John. He is taken to an examination room farther back in the hospital. Back in the waiting room, a newspaper sits unopened on the table. The sports page announces that pitcher Whitey Ford of the New York Yankees dominated the Philadelphia Phillies to win the 1950 World Series. But of course, Joe Miller, a normally fervent baseball fan, doesn’t even care. The world is a serious, dark place right now. All attention is focused on one question: What’s taking them so long? Joe and Catherine are hoping for news from the doctors that will replace their worry with a rush of relief.

      It isn’t to be. Eventually, a doctor comes back with the terrible news. After a thorough examination and battery of tests, it’s definite that John has the nightmare virus called polio, a virus that usually causes nerve damage in the spinal cord or brain stem. This damage can bring on paralysis in a person’s legs, arms, and the rest of the body.

      The disease that kept President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair was now destroying Joe and Catherine’s young son’s muscles at a rate that will soon keep him confined to his bed or a wheelchair for an especially long time—possibly forever.

      John was admitted immediately to the D. T. Watson Home for Crippled Children, also in Sewickley, which provided the best care possible at the time, but the prognosis was not encouraging. In the days to follow, John hopelessly and painfully would fall to the horrors that are the symptoms of the disease. Gradually, but steadily, he lost the use of both his legs and left arm. He would remain this way for a few months, and it looked like he may be restricted to a wheelchair forever.

      Obviously, this is heart-wrenching for any parent to see. For John’s parents though, like many faced with a very sick child, with the pain came determination, a strong faith, and a will to do whatever it took to see their son walk again.

      Under the hospital’s instructions, the Watson Home staff began administering the best-known methods at the time. A considerable part of the treatments included a painstaking procedure known as the Kenny method. This technique—developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny, a chief nurse in the Australian military (the Australians gave the title of sister to military nurses)—completely changed the history of polio treatment.

      Before Sister Kenny’s method, doctors had put splints and braces on affected limbs and used a respirator called the iron lung to help patients breathe. Noticing that patients’ limbs were stiff but not permanently paralyzed, she believed it was best to use hot packs and encourage gentle movement rather than to restrict movements with splints and braces. Her method effectively taught patients how to use limbs again.

      A female doctor—a rarity at the time—Dr. Jessie Wright was one of the most skilled practitioners in the world at administering the treatment. At the beginning of each day, she instructed nurses caring for her patients—including John—to perform the same steps. All effected parts of the body must be heated right to the point just below a burn. This should be done either by applying just-under-scalding hot compresses or by submerging the patient into a hot whirlpool bath. Immediately following the moist heat, the muscles were to be worked vigorously by nurses.

      The nurses dutifully performed this treatment once a day, and although there were days when it seemed that a muscle would twitch here and there, no real breakthroughs were visible. The answer to John’s problem seemed to be nowhere in sight.

      But the real key to the eventual polio cure for Miller would not come from a nurse or someone with eight years of medical school. It would come from a hardworking blue-collar worker, Joe Miller. Joe worked jobs on the railroad and as a truck driver. Any downtime he had was filled with building projects and odd jobs to help support his family.

      After a few months of ineffective treatments, Joe posed the seemingly obvious and sensible question to the doctor—a question that would eventually and miraculously end up being the missing piece to his son’s recovery.

      If one treatment a day was good, wouldn’t two or three be better?

      Surprisingly, the doctor answered yes.

      Why, then, weren’t the doctors giving John more than one treatment a day before this? The doctor explained that there simply wasn’t enough time in the day to schedule all of the children for more treatments. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Watson Home had a large influx of polio patients. With all the beds full, and only so many nurses and whirlpools to go around, once a day was the best we can do, the staff explained.

      At this, Joe and Catherine made the conscious and self-sacrificing decision to remove their son from the care of the hospital and its doctors. Dr. Wright was the best the area could offer, but the hospital staff was overwhelmed with the influx of patients. What if someone was to focus the Kenny method on one patient, three times a day?

      From that moment on, Joe would be that someone. His life and his family’s would revolve around his working night shift on the railroad and caring for his son during the day. He created a whirlpool out of an inner tube, a tarp, an agitator modified from a broom, and a constant supply of steaming hot water delivered by Catherine. She would actually draw the water from a pump that was in the house, and it would then be boiled in huge pots one at a time.

      Joe would rub down his boy’s effected muscles in a painstaking routine each morning. The entire process would be repeated again in the afternoon. After a quick meal and a few hours sleep, Joe would give him one last treatment session and then head out to the nearby Aliquippa and Southern Railroad Works.

      This was life for the Miller family for thirteen wearisome months. Many with less inner strength would have lost faith and given up when nothing happened after a few months of this routine. But John’s family did not. His father created a regimen and a written schedule complete with charts for each part of the Kenny procedure and stuck to it diligently. For hours, day after day, Joe worked toward his goal when others would have thrown in the towel.

      This routine of scheduling, performing the task, and recording it on charts would resurface later in John’s life through a much more enjoyable pursuit, basketball training. His father, in the hopes that John would walk again, unknowingly modeled the disciplined regimen in front of his son.

      After a little over a year, a tiny pinprick of light appeared at the end of the long, dark tunnel. Faint glimmers of hope, almost abandoned, suddenly began to appear. John’s leg muscles started to twitch and then move. The once-lame right arm gained some limited motion. These movements restored hopes and reinvigorated the spirits of the whole family.

      John reached another milestone when, with assistance, he was able to stand on his own. Finally, as his mother cried tears of joy, he took a few steps. It would be the late fall/early winter of 1952 when John began to walk again. The warm feeling of thankful relief finally replaced the family’s constant underlying tension.

      By the snowy month of January 1953, John wanted not only to walk; he was ready to get outside and play.

      John’s, Can I go play outside yet? was repeatedly heard around the house. Finally, Catherine gave him the green light and allowed him to go outside to play with his older brother, Joe. She bundled up John in his winter gear and sent him out to sled. With this, it seemed that the Miller’s nightmare had ended.

      Brothers Joe Jr. and John

      Photo Credit: Miller Family

      CHAPTER 2

      MIRACLE ON ICE

      Do you believe in miracles? Yes!

      —Al Michaels, Lake Placid Olympics, 1980

      God gives us only what we can handle . . . Apparently God thinks I am a bad-ass.

      —Unknown

      "I T’S JUST A little hill around the way, John Miller and his brother called back to their mother as they walked away from the house. We’ll be back before supper."

      John recalls that "it was the perfect place to sleigh ride. I was having the time of my life . . . beautiful winter day—not too cold—a little sunny even. The setup was perfect. A nice big hill would let the kids fly down to the bottom where it would level out at the base. You could gather yourself up, pick up your sled, and then cross the road. On the other side of the road was another hill you could go down. The neighborhood kids loved sledding there.

      "First my brother goes down, then me. We were laughing and having a great time. It was my turn to go down again. I got a nice jump onto the sled, and away I

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