As Brandon Miller walked across the stage at his graduation ceremony, friends and family erupted in a loud roar, cheering the Carthage High School senior on.

The walk was slow, but steady.

“I walked the stage, got my diploma, shook the guy’s hand and smiled to the audience,” Brandon said. “I did it all by myself.”

Brandon walked over to his family and gave everyone hugs and kisses.

Graduation for Brandon Miller was his awakening. He made it to the day where all the strange looks, odd questions and whispers were forgotten.

All the pain and frustration was finally just a long-lost memory.

People could see that he was Brandon Miller.

“They saw me for me and not just a blind boy,” Brandon said. “And, I was happy for that.”

A Stand-up Guy

Brandon Miller stands out in any crowd. He’s not just an average freshman at Missouri Southern. He’s blind, but all of his friends and family can’t say enough about the 18-year-old who can always brighten a room and make almost anyone smile.

He was never supposed to live a normal life. He was never supposed to graduate from Carthage High School, either.

Doctors weren’t even sure Brandon was going to survive when he was born three months premature.

“Doctors had me prepared for everything,” said Brandon’s mother, Cindy Miller. “They told me he might come out with no legs or arms.”

Brandon was rushed to a Springfield hospital’s neonatal care unit weighing in at 2.1 pounds. For three months, doctors and nurses watched Brandon make astounding improvement with every small breath he took.

It was still too early to understand any long-term effects of the premature birth.

“They were trying to prepare me for the worst,” Cindy said. “I was so scared. I didn’t know what to expect.”

When Cindy and her husband Randy received the call to pick Brandon up from the hospital, the last thing they expected was more bad news. Right before they signed the release papers, doctors told the new parents their son was blind.

“We were in a state of shock,” Cindy said. “I wanted to be away from everyone else.”

Brandon was diagnosed with retrolental fibroplasia. In its simplest form, RLF stands for detached retinas.

It meant Brandon would never see the light of day – ever. Cindy and Randy were referred to an eye surgeon in Memphis. However, the surgery did little to improve his chances of ever seeing. An early surgery left scaring on Brandon’s lenses, which is still visible today. After all the disappointment in failed surgeries, his parents finally accepted Brandon’s blindness.

“I just was ready to take Brandon home,” Cindy said.

Acceptance

Growing up with his family was a challenge. Brandon didn’t understand why he continually kept walking into the walls of their Carthage home. Brandon wondered why his parents and brother Tyler always stayed clear of the walls, but he always found them.

“You need to watch where you’re going,” his parents always said. “One of these days you’re going to run down one of these walls.”

At age 3, Brandon remembers, is when he realized his eyes weren’t working the same way his family’s eyes did. They saw television shows and described colors and shapes. It was never anything Brandon saw.

“After a while, I started thinking something was wrong with my eyes,” Brandon said.

In preschool he found refuge with building blocks. The blocks came natural to him and didn’t require vision. His small hands would grip the blocks, and it was only in the back of his mind where he had the slightest idea of what he was building.

Teachers helped Brandon learn the basics by word association. Fire is red. Grass is green. He didn’t know what red and green looked like, but he knew that’s what his peers saw. At Fairview Elementary in Carthage, Brandon stood on the sidelines as other children played sports. Those who weren’t afraid of sitting close to him often forgot about his blindness: “Hey, did you see that shot?”

Brandon never bottled up anger toward other students at his school. He realized some of them just didn’t understand what was wrong with him.

“Kids are kids,” he said. “They would look at my eyes, and at that young age, kids don’t want to understand this person has a disability.”

While Brandon continued to embrace his friends and disregard those who never gave him a chance, his parents were fighting their own battle with the Carthage school district. Cindy said board members weren’t ready to accept a legally blind student in their classrooms.

“I wasn’t going to send him away to a blind school,” Cindy said.

Several school board meetings were held to distinguish what factors Brandon had to meet in order for the school to let him attend class.

“They were looking for any reason not to educate him,” she said.

The Millers won the battle against the school district. By law, it had to be able to provide proper education for all students, including Brandon.

“It was a fight,” she said. “But, we won.”

As Brandon’s parents took care of his right to an education, he was always working at gaining acceptance. At a fifth grade talent show, Brandon said, is when his life started turning around. The Fairview Elementary student went in front of his peers looking for his shining moment.

He played “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin on the piano.

For those few moments under the bright lights, Brandon was on his own. The notes were strong and on key. The song was perfect for the occasion.

“It’s a happy, bright and uplifting song,” Brandon said. “I wanted to come across as being a happy person.”

When it was over, Brandon could hear the excitement in the audience. The emotion was felt throughout his body. He finally made it.

“The audience accepted me,” Brandon said.

Life at School

Brandon understands just how lucky he is. As hard as it was for his parents to accept his blindness, it was what they had to do. Cindy and Randy could have easily sent Brandon to a blind school in St. Louis, but knew their son would have missed out on a worthwhile childhood.

In the middle of the tour at the St. Louis blind school, Cindy and Randy knew it wasn’t for Brandon and left when they saw severely mentally challenged children. Brandon, despite being born three months premature, only has blindness to tackle in life. In every other way, he’s as smart as they come.

“I knew the school wasn’t for him,” Cindy said.

As positive of an outlook Brandon has always had, it’s not to say he didn’t face many hardships throughout high school. There were more than a handful of physical fights. Most times it was out of frustration when Brandon would hear snickering in the background.

“I don’t know how you’re expected to do geometry,” one student said in Brandon’s geometry class.

For a majority of the skirmishes, Brandon kept his cool. But for many, the pressure to stand up for himself grew too strong, and he fought back. Some fights he won, others he lost. When Brandon would come home for the day with a fight under his belt, his parents were always disappointed.

“You both will have Band-Aids on and both look funny,” Brandon’s father, Randy, would say after a fight. “Fights don’t solve anything.”

Throughout junior high and high school, Brandon was given the opportunity to work with a laptop computer. Instead of enduring the long and lengthy process of translating all of Brandon’s work from Braille, the computer let him type and complete assignments just like other students were working on.

“It allowed me to be a regular student,” Brandon said. “It gave me a lot more freedom.”

As a young adult, Brandon has matured. He’s accepted the fact that most likely he will never see. Brandon will never know the faces of his friends and family. Even the simplest of things, such as homework, are only but a mystery. He’s a straight “A” student, but has never once seen what the letter looks like on top of one of his term papers.

But it’s OK for Brandon.

He knows in order to make use of himself in the world, he has to accomplish everything on his own. Even asking for directions or needing assistance to cross a street bothers him.

“It’s not fair for me to ask the sighted world to adapt to me,” Brandon said.

That attitude has given Brandon the opportunity to complete 13 years of public education. It was never easy, but he proved everyone wrong that he belonged in the classroom along with his peers. When it came time to graduate from Carthage High School, Brandon finally stopped thinking about others and thought about himself for a change.

“It was just another one of those moments of accomplishments for me,” Brandon said. “I was hoping some people would take notice.”

They did.

A Southern Home

It was an easy decision to apply to Southern. It was local, the education was good and the cost of financing an education at Southern wasn’t too bad either.

“I knew it was a well-rounded school,” Brandon said.

Making the transition from high school to Southern has been steady. Brandon continues to learn the nooks and crannies of the campus. His walking cane helps, but it’s the day-after-day walking which helps familiarize himself with the campus.

The instructors, Brandon says, are more than willing to help him. They’ve treated Brandon as an equal, which he appreciates. Socially, college life has been a positive experience.

“I have a lot more freedom here,” Brandon said.

Students have been more than friendly. When Brandon waits outside for his ride, some students have come up to him and asked if he needs help getting around.

A psychology major, Brandon hopes to graduate from Southern and possibly transfer to Southwest Missouri State University to attain a master’s degree. He’s hoping to become a counselor or find something similar in that line of work.

“I just can’t see myself in an office pushing papers or crunching numbers all day,” Brandon said. “It’s not enough exposure to the world and life for me.”

A Lesson of Life

While Brandon Miller may never see, it’s his persistence and personality that has kept his life worth living. He admits it though. He often times finds himself angry and frustrated. He wants to see.

“The world is just filled with so much color, and I can’t see it,” Brandon said. “It would just be nice to see a rolling hill in the fall or the rivers in the spring.”

Brandon hopes that college life will be everything he hopes it will be. He wonders if people in the world will start looking at him and not his blindness.

“You can approach blind people and talk with them just like anyone else,” Brandon said. “People need to get over the fear and make an effort.”

With impressive medical technology consistently changing, there might be hope someday.

But in the mean time, he’s just focused on being Brandon Miller.

“Well, I’m blind, but that’s OK,” Brandon said. “I can deal with this.”