Billy Miller

Today my sister Natalie called to tell me that Billy Miller had been killed in a boat accident last night.

It is hard for someone who went to a huge high school (ie, Nat's husband and mine :) ) to understand why the news of the death of a person whom you have not seen for the last 15 years (in my case, probably less time for Nat) can be so devastating. But Plainview was a small school where the elementary, middle school and high school campuses were all within walking distance of each other. I had 65 people in my graduating class and many of those I graduated with, I had started out in class with in kindergarten.

Billy Miller was in Nat's grade (two years behind me) and we grew up with him -- from elementary all the way through high school. He went on all of the Young Astronaut trips with us in middle school (you get to know a guy pretty well when you travel via bus from Oklahoma to Florida). He was at almost every social gathering that I can remember in high school (school dances, "parties" at the Coach Thompson's house after the home football games, and parties at friends' houses). The thing that I remember most about Billy is that he was SO nice -- just one of the nicest guys that you would ever meet. He was gentle and calm but had a great sense of humor -- like a comedian, you could look in his eyes and look at the little smirk on his face and see that there was a lot of mischief going on inside his head.

The hardest thing about his death for me is that it was so pointless and ridiculous -- an inexperienced 21-year-old girl tried to drive the boat he was in and was going about 80 miles per hour when she hit an enbankment and flipped the boat. It is such a waste.