An Awesome Ride: Through a father’s eyes

With special guest:

• Cameron Miller
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In 2012 Shaun Miller made a YouTube video in his bedroom called MY FINAL GOODBYE. In this video Shaun managed in only 2 minutes and 54 seconds to get out some important messages before it was too late.

Shaun was only 17 years of age but he knew that he had at most a few weeks to live because of his heart condition. He said that he had no regrets and that we should live life to the fullest. We should express our love to the people around us. Importantly he said to make sure that his dad Cameron was OK.

Overnight there were 30,000 hits and a week later that number had gone to over 1 million. Now it is over 7 million. Clearly this is an extraordinary person.

Although Shaun said he preferred talking to writing he also managed to write a book before he made the video and gave it the title An Awesome Ride. Now seven years after Shaun’s death his father Cameron has taken that work and included his own thoughts and emotions in following Shaun’s all too short life. In the new book An Awesome Ride: Through a father’s eyes we get to follow that roller coaster of a life and put Shaun’s life in context. We get to see Shaun’s effect on others in the community.

The effect on Cameron was to establish The Shaun Miller Foundation, set up to help families when children are born with congenital heart disease (CHD). Surprisingly CHD is the most common major birth defect and help is definitely valued.

Following on from the book Cameron is now working on a major motion picture telling the story. As you can hear when listening to Cameron this is a story of hope. Shaun managed during his life to maintain an incredibly positive outlook, inspiring children and adults, sportsmen, entertainers and lots of mums and dads. Now through his father Cameron everyone can learn and be inspired by hearing about Shaun’s story.

Cameron Miller

Cameron Miller is the founder and CEO of The Shaun Miller Foundation and began the journey back in 2015 after watching his only much loved son pass away from Childhood Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) three years earlier.

Cameron decided to start the foundation to complete Shaun’s legacy and to set about tackling CHD and its impacts on not just the people with it but those around them who suffer, just as he had with Shaun.

Cameron loved the idea of making movies and working behind the scenes. He started distributing movies that others shied away from, and that brought him into contact with people like Australian movie industry legend Alan Finney OAM, who today in the Chairman of the board of The Shaun Miller Foundation and acts as a mentor to Cameron.

Cameron’s son Shaun had a myriad of heart defects and battled a 17 year life that involved more than 1000 medical procedures include two heart transplants.

Shaun’s battle for life consumed Cameron, and it wasn’t until a few years after his passing that Shaun’s messages of positivity and hope got through to Cameron. From that point on, he has shifted from being a meandering drifter with no lust for life to a driven and highly motivated CEO of The Shaun Miller Foundation.

Song selection by our guest: Show your Heart by Brett Vincent

Note: This program is an encore presentation of the one aired on 15 August 2019.

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