Miller ready for first SoBo race since gun accident

Owen Miller worked the questions over in his head time and time again.

What did he ever do to deserve this? How did the gun end up going off? And why did he have to end up in the hospital with a three-inch wide hole in his left foot?

“They say that everything happens for a reason,” Miller said. “But I couldn’t understand why this was happening to me.”

Miller may never understand the mystery of how, while skeet shooting in his backyard, his shotgun accidentally fired into his left foot — filling it with birdshot. But, after two surgeries and three painful months of recovery, the veteran Late Model driver is finally ready to try to put the incident in his rear view mirror.

For the first time since his accident Miller will get ready to race, as he enters the field for tonight’s Valpak 150 at South Boston Speedway. It’s more than he had hoped for not all that long ago as he lay in a hospital bed wondering if he’d ever be able to walk again.

“I’m as excited as I can be,” Miller said. “It’s something that I love to do, and now I can go back at it and see what happens.”

It’s a second chance that Miller is determined to make the most of, particularly after all he had to go through to get here.

The Emporia native was working on his car on March 15 along side his brother-in-law, trying to get ready for South Boston’s May 24 opener, when they decided to take a break and go shoot at some clay pigeons.

Trapshooting was nothing new for Miller, who grew up hunting and considers himself a safe handler of firearms. And the 200 acres that surround his home were as perfect a place as any to do it.

But then it happened, and Miller is still not sure how.

Miller remembers that his shotgun was resting at his side and pointing toward the ground. But whether he brushed up against something, jarring or accidentally squeezing the trigger remains unknown. All that was certain was the bang and the pain, as the shotgun discharged into the outside of Miller’s left foot by the ankle — giving new meaning to the term lead foot — as pellets of birdshot filled the appendage.

Miller was still standing after the blast, but when his brother-in-law asked if he was OK, the reality of what happened hit him harder than the shot he had just taken.

“I said, ‘No, I just shot myself in the foot,’” Miller recalled. “I laid down on the ground and tried to get my wits about me rather than passing out.”

At the hospital, the doctors could only do so much.

They cleaned and trimmed what flesh they could. But the shot had ruined the bones where it hit, turning some to dust and scattering shards of others. And when they were done, Miller was left with a three-inch wide, rectangular hole on the side of his foot that he could see light through. He was also left with 16 of the birdshot pellets left in his foot — remnants that the doctors couldn’t get to without doing more ligament and tissue damage than it was worth.

“At first everybody was really concerned. They couldn’t believe it happened,” Miller said. “I was really overwhelmed and very appreciative of how much they cared.

“But after they figured out I was actually going to be able to walk again, that’s when the jokes started to come.”

While the fragments of bone left behind began to fuse themselves back together, Miller’s friends and family mercilessly poured on the abuse even as the driver tried to work past his fear of never being able to walk without a limp again.

He was given a cake that said “Happy Birthday Trigger.” And when people he knew ended up with an undesirable task on their to-do list they’d say, “I’d rather shoot myself in the foot than do that. Oh wait, you already did, Owen.”

Absorbing barbs left and right, Miller spent his days sitting around, watching television and trying not to go crazy. But he was also starting to heal. His methods of using either crutches to get around or hopping on one foot eventually gave way to a one crutch and a special walking boot system. And after a skin graft operation, Miller finally began to take his first steps as April turned into May.

“It was painful,” Miller said. “But I’d walk until it hurt.

“It felt like my whole leg was swelling up so much it would burst open.”

But Miller told himself that he was going to beat this problem, and he worked at it every day and took as much pain as he could stand. And as the weeks went by, he started to get better.

Soon Miller was able to stumble around his property, fiddling with tractors and doing his best to mash their clutches like he would a racecar’s. He figured the day he could do that without pain would be the day he was ready to come back.

That day is today.

“You get sidelined and go what he went through, and it mentally messes with you,” fellow South Boston Late Model veteran Rodney Cook said. “I’m sure he’s itching to get back in and get 150 laps under his belt.”

Cook should know too. Just last year the beginning of Cook’s season was put in doubt after he had an eggplant-sized benign tumor removed from the back of his left thigh. He knows all too well what awaits Miller in that car tonight, both the good and the bad.

“You brake a lot (with the left foot), and it’s hard on you. I’ve gotten out of the car with cramps in my foot and my leg,” Cook said. “It’s going to be a challenge for him, no doubt.”

A challenge. But also a blessing.

“Once he gets in the racecar, I’m sure things will be forgotten,” Cook continued. “You block things out and just focus on the race.”

But even if there is a little bit of pain left when he slams on the brake heading into the corners of the 4/10-mile track, it will be all right. Miller has moved on from his accident, even if he still doesn’t understand it. Now, he just hopes that others can learn from all that he went through. He doesn’t want anyone else to have to rely on doctors and scalpels and the whims of fate to get a second chance. He hopes that his story is enough to stop it from even getting that far in the first place.

“That’s probably something that I’ll never figure out. Why I had to be the example of that, I’ll never know,” Miller said. “Maybe I’ve saved somebody’s life somewhere along the line that knows me.

“That’s what I like to think, anyway.”