Northwestern grad has first responder dreams and international plans
Leo Miller celebrates his 19th birthday today. He plans dinner with his friends.
We talked late last spring as he sat in his backyard in a grimy pair of blue jeans. That day he’d been up since 6 am.
“I have to get an engine into the truck.” He quipped as we finished up.
Clearly, the recent Northwestern graduate is not your typical young adult. Don’t get me wrong. He loves video games and has a chocolate lab. He regularly fights with his mom and sisters over the usual teen boy stuff. He was a member of the Troubadours, the acclaimed Northwestern High School chorus, ran cross country, and had a part time job at Wendy’s and with a caterer. He owns a truck with a loud and rowdy exhaust.
However, for the next year at least, his plans are off the beaten path.
The 2022 graduate left June 14 with his family for their annual summer trip to Sweden. When his parents and 2 sisters returned in early August, he was not with them.
Leo ultimately wants to be and is a firefighter, having joined the Riverview Volunteer Fire Department in May of 2020 as part of the Junior Program. He has now completed 200 credit hours training as a firefighter, to include fundamentals of firefighting, basic life support and first aid. In addition to being called to fires, his department gets dispatched with EMS. He has learned the basics of equipment repair, cleaning and maintenance of station equipment, for example chain saws and the Jaws of Life. He has assisted in vehicle extrication. Professional conduct prohibits him from sharing specifics, however, now an adult, he may assist in aiding trauma victims or treating a narcotics overdose.
Though he did earn his Fire Safety merit badge in Scouts BSA, his interest in firefighting was a means to serve after earning his Eagle Scout rank.
“It was a way to continue public service.”
Another passion of Leo’s is vehicle repair and maintenance, and he has significant talent. The engine he mentioned earlier did make it back into the abandoned 1976 Chevy K10 Scottsdale that originally belonged to his great-grandfather. “It had been parked since roughly when I was born.” Leo said. He dragged it out of a field and had it towed to Rock Hill.
He also owns a 2020 Toyota Tacoma SR5, to which he has added an aftermarket Cat back exhaust and a cold air intake, which explains the roar that announces Leo’s coming and going.
Besides 2020, every summer starting before his first birthday, Leo has made a trip to Sweden, his mother’s homeland for the summer. Already a dual citizen, he will spend the next year establishing Swedish citizenship as an adult. His family owns a summer home near the small village Svenstavik, located approximately 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
From birth, Leo and his siblings have been taught to speak and write Swedish. During the summer months, they are mostly immersed. Although growing up, they read books, watched DVDs and listened to music in Swedish, Leo admits that he was not fluent until about 5 years ago.
“Rosetta Stone is clutch.” he says, touting the language mastery software purchased by his mother for self-study.
He admits that sometimes when he is trying to convey a thought quickly, he will speak “Swenglish”, reverting to English and back to Swedish when translation is momentarily beyond him. He hopes to work on fluency, both in spoken and written language during the next year.
He has been on his own before in Sweden, having attended Lutheran confirmation camp during adolescence, a 2 week sleep away camp experience at the end of which he was confirmed. That was with Mom somewhat close by, however, in country at least.
Now she is an ocean away, and today, he celebrates his 19th birthday with friends on another continent.
He will be in class 8 am to 3 pm, as he is on weekdays. He applied and was accepted to Nordiskt Flygtekniskt Centrum (NFTC), a school to train aviation technicians with a special focus on helicopters, in Luleå.
A city on the coast of Northern Sweden, Luleå, is just below the Arctic Circle and is about the size of Rock Hill. The school is housed at the local airport, which is also home to a wing of the Swedish Air Force.
He is learning how to service and maintain helicopters. In class part time, he is taking math that reinforces concepts he learned in high school and is learning about engines, rotor systems, airframes and landing gear and how extreme temperatures and other forces act on them. Students gets hands on experience in a skills lab where the students have access to different helicopters, for example a Sikorsky and a Bell, on which to practice taking apart and reassembling engines and landing apparatus.
When not in school he dwells in a two-room studio apartment. There are other students in his program who are housed in his building, and he has made friends. He cooks for himself and intentionally plans variety into his diet, as leaving it up to chance would result in pasta every night
“I like pasta.”
This summer he contended with 23 hours of sunlight having trouble sleeping when it was light outside. Come winter, he will have 23 hours of darkness and has already installed accessory lights on his vehicle, 2 eighteen-inch light bars mounted above the windshield to help him see when it is very dark and there is an influx of wildlife. Like moose for example.
“Regular headlights, you just can’t see anything. It’s so dark.”
Speaking of winter and darkness, with it comes cold. The average temperature is 21 degrees in December. Average low is 8 degrees. Mean sunshine hours in December are 3 total. FOR THE ENTIRE MONTH. Winters are long, cold and snowy.
He is driving a Volvo and gasoline is 20 SEK (Swedish Krona) per liter, which translates to $8 per gallon. Food prices and rates of inflation otherwise are more in line with the United States.
Talking with him via phone, now 6 times zones and a 13+ hour flight (which with a layover or 2 could fly into “his” airport) he sounds somewhat different that the newly minted high school senior wearing oil-stained jeans whom I interviewed just 2 months ago in his backyard. Occasionally he hints at being homesick. He plans to come home for Christmas.
“I don’t want to spend Christmas by myself.”
He admits that it’s hard being away from home, but he plans to stay for at least a year.
He’s not sure what will happen after that.
“If I come back, I will join a local fire department.”
If. He would not be the first in his family to cross the Atlantic to go to school for a year and stay. His mother, Helena came here as an exchange student in the late 1990s.
It’s hard not to be excited for him and to look forward to watching as his plans and adventures unfold. Grattis på födelsedagen. Happy Birthday, Leo.
