By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Specialist
It was the end of summer in 2005, and 8-year-old Rashaan Miller was getting ready to start a new school year. He doesn’t remember much from that time. He certainly didn’t know Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest storms in the history of the United States, was bearing down on his city and his family’s Ocean Avenue home.
“The night before we left, I remember my mom was watching the news,” recalled Miller, now a 17-year-old senior at Athens High School. “She told us to pack our bags and get ready to leave. We left the next morning … two days before the hurricane hit. I was clueless.”
Miller’s mother gathered up her two boys, her mother and other friends and family and fled with thousands of other evacuees toward Texas. They drove until they arrived in Athens. It looked like a good place to rest.
“We just stopped when we wanted to get some sleep,” recalled Miller. The exhausted and displaced group took a room at what was then the Spanish Trace Inn and received some assistance from First Baptist Church of Athens. “I asked my mom a few weeks into staying at the hotel if we were going to go back home, and she said no. Everything is wiped clean.”
Athens was their new home, and it has been a good one, he said. Miller was recently named Athens High School’s student of the month. He is well liked by both his peers and his teachers. Though soft spoken, he does not hesitate to introduce himself to strangers with a firm handshake and a direct gaze or greet familiar faces in the same way.
“He is always well mannered, polite, happy and doing what he’s supposed to do,” said AHS Principal Jami Ivey. “He gives the best in his classes. He’s just a joy to be around.”
As a student in Athens ISD’s Pinnacle Early College High School, Miller is on track to graduate with a high school diploma this coming May and an associate’s degree from Trinity Valley Community College a few month’s later. He is the starting inside linebacker for the varsity football team, plays varsity basketball and will run track again this season. “That’s really about it,” he said, without a touch of irony.
“Rashaan works extremely hard,” said head football coach Paul Essary. “I can always count on him to give his very best.”
Miller said he wants to put his work ethic and natural talent to work to become a professional athlete, either in football or basketball. “But if that doesn’t work out,” he added, “I’d like to major in communications in college and (go into) broadcasting.”
He feels no great pressure from his family, he said. “I feel pressure from myself. I’m my own greatest critic. If I can do my best, it’s worth it.”