KARNS CITY, Pa. (EYT/D9) — On Friday nights, Brad “Stackhouse” Miller was a beast on the football field for Karns City.
Nothing and no one could stop him. He dominated opponents with a relentless motor, tenacity and unbridled passion for the game.
On Saturday and Sunday afternoons when he would visit the home of Gremlins’ coach Lon Hazlet, that beast turned into a quiet and shy teddy bear.
He’d play with Hazlet’s young children, rolling on the floor with them, laughing. He’s say little, just sit on the couch and watch football.
“My wife would ask, ‘Does he even like you?'” Hazlet recalled, chuckling. “I said, ‘I think so. He’s here.’
“As a coach, you hope to have an impact on a young man,” Hazlet added. “But every so often a young man like Brad Miller has an impact on a coach. Brad Miller changed my life. He was that good of a guy.”
Miller took the same relentlessness and tenacity into his fight with ALS — better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In 2015, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and succumbed to the disease on Monday.
“He spent a lot of time with my family,” Hazlet said. “He was a gentle giant. He’d be rolling around on the floor with my little boys for more than two hours. He was just really something special because he was one of those guys who could flick the switch. He was a great football player and he was nasty. But when he came off the field, he was truly a gentleman.”
Miller was a first-team all-conference linebacker and a first-team all-District 9 offensive lineman during his senior year in 1997.
The Gremlins went unbeaten during the regular season and won the D9 title.
Miller had always planned on returning to Karns City to teach and coach after his days in the football field were over at Waynesburg University. His time on the field there was shortened by injuries. Even before he graduated, he was a volunteer assistant coach for football and track and field at his alma mater.
In 2005, he was hired as an elementary teacher in the Karns City school district.
Ten years later, he received the sobering diagnosis of ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that slowly robbed Miller of his movement.
In a ceremony in December before a Karns City basketball game against Cranberry, Miller’s jersey No. 55 was retired. In the 54-year history of the Karns City football program, Miller was the first player to have that honor.
Miller, too weakened by his disease, did not attend the ceremony.
But he watched from home on the school’s livestream.
His friend and former teammate Jake Dailey read a statement from Miller at the ceremony.
“I would like to thank everyone who came out to show support, as well as those watching on the livestream who were not able to attend,” Miller wrote. “Due to the progression of my ALS, I’m not able to attend the ceremony, but there’s no other place I’d rather be than in the gym to be there and see everyone.
“Having my jersey retired was something that was never a personal goal of mine to achieve, since I have always been a team first and foremost person by playing my part as hard and as well as I could with everything I had. This is an unbelievable honor and I’m humbled and grateful. …
“When I decided that I wanted to coach and to teach, there was only one place where I wanted to do it and I was blessed to be able to do it in my hometown school district at Karns City for around 20 years.”
Hazlet was at the ceremony and was in awe of just how many people attended.
“Not very long, about a week before that, Eric Ritzert and T.J. McFarland and Mrs. Miller contacted me and said Brad would like you to speak,” Hazlet said. “I said I’d be honored. I wanted to reach out to all the guys that I could and I started texting and emailing and doing social media and everything I could do to reach out to as many guys as I could. I was overwhelmed because there were 35 or 40 guys that he played with there. Some drove from Erie and Ohio and Pittsburgh and a couple of guys flew in from the south. To have that kind of impact shows you what people thought of him.”
Hazlet had a chance to communicate with him in the weeks before Miller’s death.
The disease had progressed to a point where Miller could no longer speak, but the two exchanged messages.
“He and I had remained friends over the years and we had talked a lot and spent some time together,” Hazlet said.
Hazlet was young when he took over the Karns City football program — too young, maybe, he admits.
Players like Miller — especially Miller — helped Hazlet more than he could express.
“It’s a cliche but he really was like a coach on the field,” Hazlet said. “Thank God I had him and a couple of guys like him.”
Hazlet was happy he was able to reach out to Miller last week.
It’s a loss that will be deeply felt by the Karns City community. It’s been a year of loss, with Stacy Martin — mother of Mason Martin, the injured Gremlin football player who is still recovering from a major brain injury in a Pittsburgh hospital — losing her battle with cancer several weeks ago.
“I wanted to talk with him and tell him that I loved him and cared about him,” Hazlet said. “He was just so important to so many people.”
