MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WTVF — A man is sharing his very personal, very difficult story with us for a purpose. He wants to tell people anyone can change.
"It became like a home to me," Walter Miller said, looking around a room at the Alvin C. York VA Medical Center. "This is a home to me. It's a fact of opening up."
Sitting in a familiar room, Walter tells us after everything he's finally arrived at today through his faith. His Catholic upbringing is an important part of his story, a child growing up in South Carolina. He was 17 when he went into the Navy in the final days of the Vietnam War.
Watch Walter share his story in the player above.
"I felt like I wanted to get on the water, new experience," Walter said.
His life entered its hardest days at the start of the pandemic. He'd just retired and was struggling with isolation at his La Verge home alongside the loss of his work routine.
"I had nothing else to do but sit on the porch and drink alcohol or at least that's what I thought," Walter said.
The day came he realized his problem with alcohol.
"When I saw how I was acting to my wife," he said. "Looking at the abuse I was causing on my wife and my children, that's when I started realizing."
The abuse led Walter to jail.
"I decided to change," he said.
He became involved in the Rutherford County Veterans Treatment Court program at the Alvin C. York VA Medical Center. He also became part of the VA Veterans Justice Outreach program where he met Outreach Specialist Latasha Williams.
"It's giving them a chance to connect with the VA or community services or whatever they may need," she said. "It's housing or health resources, mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment."
In spaces including this familiar room, Walter completed courses including relapse prevention, recovery management, and support groups.
"We tune in with each other, and this is the result," said Walter. "I'm able to open up to people who are supportive of me."
About two months ago, Walter got the news. He was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer.
"My faith is where it's at today," he said. "I have no control over it."
Walter graduated from Veterans Treatment Court with an audience of family and people who have been along for all parts of this journey.
"Big support system, big support," Walter said. "I made it through something that was odds against me. I wasn't supposed to make it, but I held on."
Walter's wife asked not to appear on camera, but she did want to say this.
"What got me through the most is putting God first. Since the program, he's been a good dad, a good husband. Anyone who wants to change their life can. Walter is proof of that."
Cole is a person I think everyone should meet. After saving his sister's life, he's in a fight for his own. And yet he lives so joyfully, performing on stage and continuing to do what he loves. His family's story will both inspire you and make you reflect on your own. Click if you want to watch one of the most impressive young men in action, determined to write the lines of his own story despite the circumstances.
-Rebecca Schleicher
