Miles Jones
Miles Jones (born around 2001) was the older son of Candy and Micah Jones, the older brother of Noah, and Elliot Landry’s best friend and chosen brother. He grew up in the Montgomery, Alabama area, where his parents made shared food, accessible communication, refuge, and practical care part of family life. His childhood friendship with Elliot continued through school, serious illness, and their separate adult lives.
Miles was protective, emotionally perceptive, and direct when someone threatened a person he loved. He also drew, played football, kept a lizard, enjoyed teasing his brothers, and shared toys, movies, and quiet companionship with Elliot. During Elliot’s senior-year COVID-19 hospitalization, he organized a hand-drawn flyer campaign that brought hundreds of cards and letters to the hospital. The campaign gave him a way to act while he was frightened that his brother might die.
Early Life and Background
Miles was born around 2001 and had a birthday in the middle of the year. Noah, born around 2004, was approximately three years younger. Before kindergarten, Miles attended half-day preschool. Micah dropped him off before work and brought him home during his lunch break. Miles returned carrying a backpack and lunchbox; when Elliot was asleep in the house, he could shift from an excited arrival to quiet company beside the couch.
Miles first met Elliot around 2006–2007, when Miles was approximately five, Elliot three, and Noah two. Their mothers’ friendship brought them together. Candy began regularly caring for five-year-old Elliot in 2008, when Miles was about seven and Noah four. This later daily arrangement made an already-existing friendship part of the household’s routine.
Elliot’s accelerated growth was visible in preschool, long before his pituitary gigantism diagnosis at fifteen. At their early meetings, three-year-old Elliot was already about Miles’s size despite being two years younger. Miles learned about his communication differences, sensory needs, frequent hunger, fatigue, and pain through ordinary time together. His mother’s response taught him to offer food, make room, and allow a new child to approach at his own pace.
Around 2014, Candy and Micah’s house included a separate living space for Jazmine Landry and Elliot after their previous housing became unsafe. Elliot could have space with his mother while remaining close to the Jones family when she worked late. Miles’s companionship extended across that shared home: Elliot could settle beside him on the couch, and Miles could hand him the remote without requiring conversation.
The family also experienced financial strain. During Micah’s 2016 layoff, Miles and Noah helped decorate for Elliot’s thirteenth birthday with a handmade banner. Their argument over stars or basketballs, their drawings, and their singing were part of making the day a celebration despite the household’s limited money and Elliot’s worsening pain.
Education and Work
Miles was a high-school sophomore when fifteen-year-old Elliot began high school. He helped when their schedules allowed rather than remaining with Elliot through every class. On Elliot’s first day, he opened the car door, told him, “You got this,” and walked beside him before they separated for their classes. They shared seventh-period Earth Science; Miles saved a place and brought cold water as the long day ended.
His reassurance continued afterward in a text: “You did good today. Anyone gives you shit, they’ll have to go through me.” He understood that simply getting through the school day could require substantial effort from Elliot, and he recognized that effort without treating him as a spectacle.
Miles played football. During Elliot’s 2021–2022 senior year, he picked Elliot up from J&R Foods after football practice. Later, when Elliot was critically ill, football forums were among the networks through which Miles’s appeal for prayer circulated.
By the period of Elliot’s interview with Jacob Keller, Miles had a new job and a new apartment. Noah’s wedding was also approaching. Elliot understood that Miles had work and family responsibilities of his own; his reluctance to ask for help came from fear of adding to those responsibilities, despite his confidence that Miles would help him.
When he explained that fear to Logan, Elliot said, “Miles would help, but he’s got Noah and the baby,” before admitting that he did not want to be a burden anymore.
Physical Characteristics and Presentation
Miles had large feet as a child and could be clumsy around the house. Candy remembered him knocking things over in her kitchen and once getting his toes caught in a broom handle. His childhood awkwardness also appeared during back-to-school shopping, when he accidentally knocked over a store display.
At about five, he was roughly the same size as three-year-old Elliot. By around eleven, Miles stood approximately five feet tall. He could still put himself between Elliot and someone threatening him, using his position and firmness rather than relying on being the largest person present.
Football gear was part of his everyday presentation during the period when he collected Elliot from work after practice. In private family life, his old clothing could become familiar comfort for Elliot: one of Miles’s hoodies remained soft and reassuring even after it grew tight across Elliot’s shoulders.
Personality
Miles was fiercely loyal and quick to intervene when someone was cruel to a person he loved. He confronted bullies and strangers without first calculating whether defending Elliot would be socially comfortable. His anger at mistreatment was immediate, but his attention returned to Elliot once the threat had been addressed. Protection and reassurance were both necessary to him; stopping the insult did not remove its effect on his brother.
He was attentive to changes in Elliot’s expression and behavior. He learned the difference between comfortable silence and overwhelmed withdrawal, and he recognized the carefully blank expression Elliot used to hide hurt. During the McDonald’s confrontation, he understood that Elliot’s sudden loss of appetite followed humiliation rather than fullness. He could speak sharply to the person responsible and then speak gently to Elliot.
Miles’s care did not depend on making every interaction serious. He teased, joked, traded stories, and let Elliot be an ordinary brother within the same relationship that included substantial disability support. He could joke about Elliot’s shoes outrunning a teacher, call Noah’s classroom antics legendary, or compare Elliot’s deep voice to a “sleepy bear” or a “sad tree.” He also recognized when a joke had reached something painful and stopped to reassure him.
He showed practical imagination and initiative. As a child, that meant turning blankets and couch cushions into somewhere quiet. During the COVID crisis, it meant finding a task he could actually do while clinicians treated Elliot. Making and distributing flyers did not remove his fear; it gave his fear and love an outward action.
Miles was not untouched by the emergencies he helped his family face. He cried silently in the hospital waiting room with his head in his hands. His voice cracked when he saw Elliot after extubation, and he struggled to finish saying how frightened everyone had been. He remained present even when he could not remain composed.
Cultural Identity and Heritage
Miles grew up as a Black boy in the Montgomery area within a Southern family whose care extended beyond biological kinship. Candy and Micah taught him through their actions that a child needing food, quiet, protection, or somewhere safe belonged within the family’s concern. Sharing resources with Elliot was ordinary household practice, not a favor that required repayment or gratitude.
His parents cultivated protectiveness alongside tenderness. Candy challenged school administrators and other adults who punished or dismissed Elliot’s needs. Micah spoke in AAVE, carried Elliot during pain crises, and patiently massaged aching limbs. Miles learned a form of masculinity in which bodily care, softness, and reliable presence were compatible with strength. He did not need to make Elliot smaller or less capable to defend him.
For Miles, protecting a brother had a particular weight as a young Black man whose anger could be read as aggression rather than care. His parents treated his loyalty as something to guide and support. He carried their refusal to abandon a child failed by institutions into his own encounters with bullying, ableism, and fatphobic humiliation.
His COVID flyer campaign extended that family practice into the wider community. It drew on local stores, community centers, churches, neighbors, and the relationships surrounding Elliot. Its use of leaflets and community networks also echoed Montgomery’s history of Black collective organizing. The immediate purpose was personal: Miles wanted his brother surrounded by evidence that people loved him and wanted him home. The campaign’s community response made that family commitment visible beyond the Jones household.
Speech and Communication Patterns
Miles’s voice was lighter and more teasing than Elliot’s deep voice. His speech could be blunt in public defense and gentle in private reassurance. He called Elliot “El,” “bro,” and “big guy,” and referred to him as his brother without qualification. Humor allowed him to offer help without making every practical need the center of attention.
As a child, Miles explained Candy’s approach to newcomers: “Mama says when someone new comes over, you gotta let them go slow. Not everybody likes loud right away.” He invited Elliot to play without demanding an immediate spoken answer. When Elliot tapped a rhythm on a toy dinosaur, Miles copied it on the couch, joining his communication instead of correcting it.
Miles learned many of the basic signs Elliot used when speech was difficult. He and Noah also used picture schedules and AAC boards with him, keeping communication part of play and shared activity. Miles sometimes interpreted familiar signs without being asked. His understanding developed through years of knowing Elliot rather than through requiring Elliot to use one preferred form of communication.
Written messages also carried his affection: school-day texts, homemade cards, the social-media prayer appeal, and the handwritten hospital flyers. Their wording was plain and direct. The flyers named Elliot as his brother and asked other people for specific help.
Relationship to His Body
Miles sometimes wanted to hide somewhere quiet himself. His blanket cave was a comfort he knew and could offer to Elliot, not only an accommodation he made for someone else. He described its rules as “no loud and no fast. Only soft.” He allowed Noah to join them while protecting that slower, quieter space.
He understood small physical comforts concretely. He turned a couch pillow to its cool side for Elliot, stayed still while Elliot slept against him, and added another blanket when the first did not cover his legs and toes. His explanation to Candy was simple: “He was cold. The other one was too small.”
Tastes, Preferences, and Everyday Life
Miles played with Lego and toy dinosaurs. Early in his friendship with Elliot, he offered a plastic T-Rex with a button that made it roar, placing it where Elliot could approach it without having it pushed into his hands. He later gave Elliot a stuffed green dinosaur after a playdate ended early because Elliot’s knees hurt. Elliot kept it on his bed; with use, it became faded and lost a button eye. When Miles returned from preschool and found him asleep, he brought a slightly ragged plush turtle to keep the dinosaur company.
Miles offered both ‘’Cars’’ and ‘’Finding Nemo’’ for shared watching. He particularly enjoyed the music in ‘’Finding Nemo’’ even when he was not watching the screen. He told Elliot, “You don’t gotta watch it. Sometimes I just like the music.” Movie nights, blanket forts, quiet couch time, muffins, and apple juice were familiar parts of their childhood together.
Drawing was another pleasure. At about eleven, Miles spent time with a sketchpad beneath a backyard tree. When Elliot needed shade, a towel, or somewhere to lean, Miles could make room beside him and return to drawing. He also kept a lizard, and Elliot enjoyed helping him with it. Their companionship included Elliot participating in something that belonged to Miles’s life.
On Elliot’s thirteenth birthday, Miles and Noah made two cards as well as the banner. One card called Elliot stronger than Superman, kinder than anyone, and their brother even if he was huge. Under the words was a T-Rex wearing glasses and holding a birthday balloon. Miles sang in full voice over the yellow cake with chocolate frosting and later helped Elliot settle again when his knees locked.
As they grew older, ordinary brotherly conversation continued alongside care. Miles listened while Noah explained an elaborate anime plot he was not following, laughed at Noah’s story about a Pop-Tart in science class, and protected Elliot’s sleep during the ride home. Later, Elliot remembered outings such as Miles getting him to come along to the river when he was tired.
Family and Core Relationships
Candy and Micah Jones
Candy taught Miles to share without resentment, notice hunger and overwhelm, and let another child approach slowly. He watched her insist that Elliot receive care and access instead of punishment for disability-related needs. Her example shaped both his quiet hospitality and his willingness to confront an adult or peer who was causing harm.
Micah modeled steadiness through hands-on care. Carrying Elliot, helping him move, and soothing painful limbs were ordinary paternal responsibilities in the Jones home. Miles learned that gentleness did not undermine a man’s ability to protect his family. His father’s preschool transport and the family’s shared home placed those lessons within daily life, not only emergencies.
Noah Jones
Miles grew up as Noah’s older brother and became an older-brother figure to Elliot as well. Noah was only about two when Elliot entered their lives, and the three boys developed a close sibling relationship. Miles and Noah shared toys, blanket forts, birthday preparations, and the work of making Elliot comfortable.
They also shared protectiveness without having identical roles in every event. Miles handled the McDonald’s confrontation, while Noah was the brother involved at the nurse’s office after Elliot’s P.E. crisis. During the later COVID transport, Miles supported Elliot in the van with Jazmine and Melinda Fields, while Noah traveled with Candy and Micah. Their separate contributions belonged to the same family effort.
Elliot Landry
Main article: Elliot Landry and Miles Jones
Elliot was Miles’s best friend and brother. Their bond began well before high school and included food, play, affection, silence, and jokes as well as care. Miles recognized Elliot’s kindness, understanding, and worth without requiring him to meet other people’s expectations of intelligence, speech, or independence. He refused the patronizing implication that disability made his brother less fully human.
By about seven or eight, Miles was defending Elliot from Sean Landry, Elliot’s abusive half-brother. In later childhood, he took a foam sword out of Sean’s hand and placed himself between the boys. He told Sean that Elliot was their friend and that he could leave if he could not respect that. During another confrontation on the porch, he asked Elliot whether he wanted Sean to go, waited for his nod, and then told Sean to get out.
Miles and Noah sometimes saw the marks Elliot hid from adults after visits to Reggie’s home. Miles asked privately whether Sean had hurt him again; when Elliot showed the finger-shaped bruising across his ribs, Miles held him. His promise that Elliot did not have to go back expressed a child’s determination to protect his brother. When Elliot cried and tried to conceal it, Miles pressed their foreheads together and told him, “You’re safe now.”
During back-to-school shopping when Elliot was fifteen, Miles confronted teenagers who mocked Elliot’s size and food order at McDonald’s. He identified Elliot as his fifteen-year-old brother, explained that he was autistic and had a medical condition, and challenged the strangers to stop. His defense included, “You got something to say? Say it louder. Or better yet, mind your own damn business.” He then turned back to Elliot: “Ignore them. They don’t know anything.” Elliot resumed eating after the comments had made him stop.
Their brotherhood continued after Elliot moved away from Alabama and began building a life around Jacob, Ayana Brooks, Logan Weston, and Charlie Rivera. Miles remained part of Elliot’s family even when their daily lives no longer overlapped. Elliot’s fear of being a burden could keep him from reaching out, but he still believed Miles would help. Logan’s patience later reminded Elliot of the kindness he had known from Miles. That early experience of reliable brotherhood influenced the family Elliot built and the care he extended to others.
Elliot’s COVID-19 Hospitalization
Main article: Elliot Landry’s COVID-19 Hospitalization (2021–2022 School Year) - Event
During Elliot’s 2021–2022 senior school year, Miles collected him after a shift at J&R Foods and recognized that he was unwell. When Elliot deteriorated, Miles helped Micah dress him and steadied his back while the family prepared to leave. He joked that Elliot was wearing “Miles-approved fashion,” adding, “Sorry, no refunds,” while helping with the clothes.
Miles traveled with Elliot, Jazmine, and Melinda to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center. At Elliot’s request, they played soft music; Miles shared an earbud and restarted a familiar song. He squeezed Elliot’s shoulder and told him, “Still got you, big guy.” His presence continued through the frightening arrival and the effort of getting Elliot inside.
When clinicians were discussing ventilation, Miles posted an appeal asking people to pray because Elliot was very sick with COVID. He called Elliot his best friend and the best person he knew. The appeal circulated through school and church connections and football forums. In the waiting room, Miles cried quietly with his head in his hands.
Elliot required intubation, sedation, and intensive care. Complications included a deep-vein thrombosis treated with anticoagulation. Miles could not control whether his brother recovered or prevent the complications that threatened him. He instead made hand-drawn flyers with Elliot’s name, the hospital address, and requests for cards, letters, and well-wishes. Their text included “He needs to know he’s not alone. Please send him hope.” and “This is my brother, and I need your help to bring him home.”
Miles’s handwriting shook with emotion, and some letters were uneven from tears. He taped the flyers to grocery-store windows, pinned them to community-center bulletin boards, attached them to telephone poles, and distributed them at church services. Hundreds of cards and letters arrived from people around Elliot’s community and from strangers who had heard about him. Nurses displayed them in his room and read them aloud when his sedation was lightened.
Miles visited when permitted and talked to Elliot about the cards, the people praying, and everyone waiting for him to wake up. He promised that Elliot was not alone and that they would get through it together. He also brought a stuffed animal that Elliot held during the long hospital stay. After Elliot woke, Miles held his hand and told him, “I knew you’d come back. I knew it.”
During a post-extubation visit, Elliot stayed awake with Miles for nearly an hour. Miles’s voice cracked as he greeted him with the teasing complaint, “Bro… You look like shit.” He could not finish describing how frightened everyone had been. He offered a careful fist bump around the IV and, when a joke about hospital behavior touched Elliot’s fear, told him he did not have to explain himself.
Miles filled the visit with familiar conversation: school, Noah getting purple hands in a chemistry lab, and Candy’s tofu and broken blender. When Elliot finally asked whether he could sleep, Miles told him of course he could and promised he was not going anywhere. The request hurt Miles because his exhausted brother felt he needed permission to rest. He held back tears and stayed beside him.
Beliefs and Lasting Influence
Miles believed that people deserved defense from cruelty and that family meant showing up when care was frightening or inconvenient. He acted on that belief both in immediate confrontations and in patient, unremarkable company. His appeal for community help expressed confidence that individual people could contribute something meaningful even when they could not change the medical outcome themselves.
The COVID campaign also showed the limit he was living with: organizing did not give him control over Elliot’s survival. It gave him a way to make love and hope tangible while he waited. The cards, the hospital visits, and his continued presence helped Elliot understand that he was wanted and worth fighting for.
Elliot’s place in Miles’s life shaped his understanding of advocacy, justice, and care. Miles’s place in Elliot’s life provided an early model of chosen brotherhood that remained important as Elliot formed other close relationships and became a father. Their adult responsibilities and geographic distance changed access to daily companionship without undoing their family bond.
Memorable Quotes
“You got something to say? Say it louder. Or better yet, mind your own damn business.” (Defending Elliot at McDonald’s.)
“Ignore them. They don’t know anything.” (Reassuring Elliot after the confrontation.)
“I knew you’d come back. I knew it.” (To Elliot after the COVID-19 intubation.)
“He needs to know he’s not alone. Please send him hope.” (Hand-drawn hospital flyers.)
“This is my brother, and I need your help to bring him home.” (Hand-drawn hospital flyers.)
Related Entries
- Candy Jones
- Micah Jones
- Noah Jones
- Elliot Landry
- Elliot Landry and Miles Jones
- Elliot Landry’s COVID-19 Hospitalization (2021–2022 School Year) - Event