All hands on deck for Millers
The money poured in from across Iowa and well beyond.
“I had people calling me from Georgia, New York, Texas,” Tara Case said Monday. “A friend who played high school basketball with my husband sent $500.”
Case and her husband, TJ Case, didn’t know what to expect when they started putting together a fundraiser for Josh Miller and his family. They most certainly didn’t expect a Saturday fundraiser in little Durant, Iowa, to bring in more than $60,000.
But that’s what happened.
Josh, 31, was a basketball standout at Muscatine High School and St. Ambrose University before he began teaching and coaching at Durant Community Schools. He and Meghan, 33, and their 9-month-old daughter, Tenley, were on their way to Iowa City Jan. 22 when they were in a terrible accident.
Meghan, along with the unborn baby boy she was carrying, died at the scene. Josh is recovering in a rehabilitation center in Ankeny, Iowa, from a long list of injuries that included bone fractures and serious head and spinal injuries.
Little Tenley is doing fine. Meghan’s 13-year-old son was not with them at the time of the crash, but no doubt is hurting.
A week after the accident, Tara Case threw herself into planning mode. A customer from the bank where she works in Durant, Lisa Syring, came forward to help organize, even though she’d never met the Millers and barely knew Tara.
Things kept happening that way.
More organizers came on board, and donations kept coming, too. It was good to have so much planning to do, Tara said. The distractions were a blessing, even though the Cases felt certain that Josh was going to get better.
“Every time we would go and see him, I knew he could hear us, even though some of the doctors said he couldn’t,” Tara said. “There was one time when I was holding his hand and a nurse was getting ready to suction his lungs and told him it was going to be painful.
“At that moment, he squeezed my hand, and I knew he could hear what was happening.”
But Josh had no idea what was happening outside his hospital room.
Tara was looking at Miller family pictures one day and came up with a theme for the silent auction and fundraiser she was planning: Power of a Hand.
“There was this picture of Meghan’s hand, holding Tenley’s,” she remembered. “Then there was one of Josh’s hand with Tenley’s little foot, and I started thinking about the power of hands — not just Meghan and Josh’s, but all the hands we were going to need.”
To go along with the auction, the Power of a Hand team put together a three-on-three basketball tournament, and 308 people signed up.
“Some teenagers from Marengo, Iowa, were too young to play in the tournament, but they sent their registration fee, anyway,” Tara said. “We’d hear from people in Des Moines and Michigan, and I’d wonder if this was getting bigger than us.”
When the fundraiser day finally came a week ago Saturday, the turnout brought more surprises.
“We had basketball officials, including some of the guys who officiate at the MAC Tournament, come out,” Tara said. “The community center was packed.”
As the donations came in, volunteers from the bank where Tara works did the clerking.
“The president of the bank was behind that calculator,” she said. “Members of our board were there.”
Everyone in Durant, Wilton and Muscatine, it seemed like, were there to pitch in for the Millers.
The Cases haven’t told Josh what they’ve done. They figure he’s got enough to think about — most importantly his three goals: Take care of his children, return to teaching at Durant and play basketball again.
“His young age, his being athletic and his strong attitude are going to help him prove doctors wrong,” Tara said. “He’s getting stronger every single day, and he’s going to meet his goals.”
The Cases and the other organizers, meanwhile, have exceeded all of theirs.
“I had cancer, and beating cancer was pretty huge,” Tara said. “This is the next-biggest thing I’ve been a part of in my life.”
The support was staggering, she said — right up to the last moments of the fundraiser.
“It was getting late, and we had run out of things to do, so I picked up a garbage bag to start cleaning up,” she said. “But the janitors at the Durant Community Center had already volunteered to do that.
“We can’t bring Meghan back, but we can help Josh and the kids. That, in essence, is the power of our hands.”
Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.
TO HELP
Donations to the Josh and Meghan Miller family may be made to: Josh Miller Fund, Liberty Trust & Savings Bank, P.O. Box 1118, Durant, IA 52747