Charlie Miller didn’t let his circumstances determine how far he could go in life. At 17 he was shot by a stranger, who mistook him for someone else, and was left paralyzed from the neck down. Yet he pushed through countless obstacles.
“His mind was perfect and he was smart,” said Betty Rackley, a sister who moved to Atlanta to care for Mr. Miller following the shooting. “And he only got smarter after he got shot because he had a lot of time to read.”
Two years ago, Mr. Miller had a violent seizure and suffered memory loss, his sister said. From that point on, his memory and his general health declined. He’d recently been in a hospital, and Mrs. Rackley was told her brother needed to go to a rehabilitative care facility.
“I told the doctor that would kill him,” she said. “He didn’t want to be there, but I wanted him to be as well as he could be so that’s where he went.”
Charlie Lee Miller Miller of East Point died Dec. 10, four days after he was admitted to Briarcliff Haven Healthcare and Rehab Center. He was 59. A funeral service was held Saturday in his hometown, Montezuma. His remains are scheduled to be cremated Monday. Meadows' Oglethorpe Funeral Chapel was in charge of arrangements.
Mr. Miller had just graduated from high school when he was shot in 1970. He’d planned to go to college, and he ultimately got there. In 1989, Mr. Miller graduated from Georgia State, said C. Talley Wells, director of the mental health and disability rights project for the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, Inc.
“Charlie was a hero to the Atlanta Legal Aid Society's Disability Rights Project because he lived a full life in the community with quadriplegia for over 40 years,” Mr. Wells wrote in a tribute to Mr. Miller. “Everyone who came to know Charlie liked him. They also felt the strength of his opinions and his will to live independently.”
Mr. Miller, the youngest of 14 children, had an athletic youth and loved to read. When he lost the use of his limbs, he poured himself into books. He did his schoolwork, and he researched and advocated for the rights of the disabled. He kept up with current events and was a computer whiz, his sister said.
He controlled the computer through a mouthpiece, Mr. Wells said.
“He was a frequent emailer, he loved to surf the web, and he had a voracious appetite for news and information,” Mr. Wells wrote in the tribute. “Charlie volunteered with veterans, proofreading applications for medical assistance.”
Mrs. Rackley said there wasn’t much her brother couldn’t do if he put his mind to it.
“He could go anywhere in that wheelchair,” she said. “And he did. He went everywhere.”
Mr. Miller is also survived by eight other siblings: sisters, Elizabeth Smith of Albany, Annie Kate Turner of Miami, Leitha Mae Harvey of Miami and Ernestine Moore of Montezuma; brothers, Sandy Miller Jr. of Delaware, Bobby Miller of Orlando, Willie James Miller of Orlando and Leroy Miller of Atlanta.
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