THE lawn-mower wouldn’t start. No matter what he tried, no matter how he jiggled, kicked, cajoled and even cursed it, the stubborn machine would not yield to Cory Dixon’s entreaties as the afternoon sun drifted into the shadows of the evening.

His parents were due home the next day from a two-week vacation with Cory’s 

younger brother and sister, and he had left the household chores until the very last minute.

The 25-year-old managed to cut half the expansive lawn of the family home in the quiet town of Argyle, Texas before the mower gave up.

He tried topping up the gas and, briefly, the mower surged to life before stopping for good just a few metres on.

Giving it one last frustrated kick for good measure, the lanky forward from the University of New Orleans headed inside and called his mother.

CORY hadn’t been all that keen to pack his 201-centimetre frame into the family car for the  annual holiday.

“I didn’t want to do the whole driving thing for two weeks straight,” he shrugs.

“My siblings were so much younger than me — I’d already done the family vacation thing and the car was really kind of too small for me to fit in.

“We had two horses, four dogs, two cats, a hermit crab, a rabbit and two acres of land so I stayed behind to watch everything.”

At 7.30pm on August 9 after admitting defeat on the mower, he rang his mum, LeAnn, to tell her he wouldn’t have the grass cut before they arrived home.

“She told me it was going to be okay and they’d figure it out when she got back,” Cory recalls.

“Before we hung up, I told Mum I loved her and she said ‘I’ll call you tomorrow’.”

Thirty minutes later the family was dead.

A tired driver fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the centre line and smashed into the unsuspecting travellers.

Michael Miller, 47, LeAnn Miller, 48, and their two children Zoey, 12, and Miles, 7, died instantly.

The driver crawled out of the wreckage with minor injuries.

Cory woke at 4am the next morning to furious knocking at the door.

Two police officers stood on the front step, told him there had been an accident and gave him a piece of paper with a number to call.

And so he rang, only to be told the officer at the scene would call back.

“That took 30 minutes; the whole time I’m wondering what happened and trying to call my mum and my stepfather,” he says.

“I knew there’d been an accident but I didn’t think it was serious, I just thought I would have to go and pick them up or something like that.”

When the call came from the officer, Cory knew immediately something was seriously wrong.

“The first thing that came out of his mouth was, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this but your family is gone’,” he recalls.

“I didn’t really understand what he was saying, because what was going through my mind was there is no way four people have just died. It’s not possible.”

In the hours to follow, Cory began the gut-wrenching ordeal of breaking the news. 

Through a “hazy fog”, he called his girlfriend and college coach; anything to avoid the first call to family.

One by one, as they learned of the devastating turn of events, people drove or flew to be by Cory’s side.

Strangely, he says, time passed quickly in the aftermath of that fateful night last year.

Busying himself with the task of getting his family home from New Mexico and preparing for the funeral, Cory also called his agent and told him to cancel all his basketball plans.

“I had this numb feeling,” he explains.

“But the thing that got me through was Mum and Dad were always really big on the fact you have to keep going forward, no matter what is going wrong in your life.

“I wanted to be the strength for my family and take care of everything.”

So for the next two weeks, that’s what he did.

More than 800 people packed the town’s high school theatre for an emotional memorial service and a smaller funeral followed a week later.

Then everything fell apart.

“Everyone is there and then everybody leaves,” Cory says.

“I wasn’t really expecting that and I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

CORY always knew he wanted to play professional basketball. 

After graduating college, he’d planned to head to Europe and the prospects looked bright, with calls from a team in Italy and two in Israel.

All that changed on that fateful August night.

He quit basketball but with no job and stuck alone in a house with only his grief for company, Cory had to do something.

He hired a personal trainer and began lifting weights to relieve the frustration.

“I was working out but I wasn’t trying to play basketball,” he says.

After a month, his mind was in a better place and Cory began to think of basketball again. Almost unbelievably he was taken with the third-last pick of the NBA’s Development League draft — Cory suspects the Austin Spurs only took him on because they knew of his personal tragedy.

At the pre-season training camp, no-one expected Cory to be in the final reckoning for a place on the team.

“I found out toward the end they were expecting to cut me first but I was the last person cut,” he says.

“It was really good going to Austin; I got back in the groove of basketball again.”

Knowing he’d made a good impression “lit the fire again”.

“After that, it was like, maybe I can do this,” he says.

In December an unexpected lifeline came in the form of Albury-Wodonga Bandits coach Brad Chalmers.

He arrived on the Border on March 9 with “no clue” of where Albury was.

“I had to Google it,” he admits, confessing his impression of Australia was all “killer snakes and desert”.

Brought in as a power forward to “do the dirty work” for the Bandits, Cory has been pleasantly surprised at the quality of the basketball here.

“Talent-wise it’s not as good as division one college basketball but it’s way more physical,” he says. “It makes it a lot more interesting and more competitive.”

After a stellar start to the season followed by a brief rocky patch, the Bandits stormed into the East conference final tonight against the Geelong Supercats at the Lauren Jackson Sports Centre.

Cory has more than proven his worth, taking out the team’s Most Valuable Player award and claiming the Allen McCowan award for best player of the annual memorial game.

The latter nomination — in honour of the late club icon — meant the most.

“It’s close to home — I didn’t know Allen but when the game came I wanted to honour his legacy,” he says.

“I know his wife, Caroline, and she’s been so great to us but I know she’s still struggling as far as his passing.

“I wanted her to go home with some kind of comfort … and that Allen would be happy looking down on the game.”

In the same way the club supported the McCowans following Allen’s death, Cory has been similarly embraced by the Bandits family, in particular coach Chalmers.

During that time Cory has endured the heartaches of three remembered birthdays and the first anniversary of his family’s death only weeks ago.

“Each time he’s (Chalmers) come up to me and asked how I’m doing and if I need anything,” Cory says.

And there’s nothing but praise for the team that helped resurrect a career he nearly gave up on.

“Albury gave me a chance,” Cory says.

“Coach Chalmers gave me a chance when a lot of coaches passed up on me.

“I owe the Bandits organisation a lot.

“I love the Bandits, I love Albury.”

THE move to Australia has clearly done Cory the world of good.

He loves the “laid-back” lifestyle and “non-judgmental” attitude of Australians. 

He’s even told girlfriend Hallie Burnett he wouldn’t mind moving to Melbourne.

The 30-year-old Texan has been a 

“tower of strength” and even made the trip 

to Albury in May with other family following suit to catch him in action last month.

But there are still “those days” when the horrifying reality of his loss closes in.

The family home has since been sold and adored pets given away to family and friends.

That was hard, Cory admits.

“You are having to get rid of pieces of your former life,” he says.

“You know it’s for the better because as much as you want everything to stay the same, you know that it can’t.”

He has trouble watching movies where people die. 

“There’s a lot of situations and there are times when things creep back into your mind,” he says.

But Cory finds comfort in the belief his family are in a better place, watching over him and urging him to keep going.

“Even when I mess up, I can still hear my mum saying ‘Why the hell would you do that?’

“When I play now, my family is always there.”

His hand automatically reaches for the two wristbands he only ever takes off for games.

One inscription reads: In loving memory 

of the Millers — Leanne, Mike, Zoey and Miles. 

The other asks: What would Jesus do?

“I found that one in my stepdad’s drawer, two days after they passed,” Cory says.

“When I take them off I kiss them and put them on the bench.”

CORY says that last phone call, where he told his mother he loved her, is a “blessing from God”.

Now, instead of wondering “what if?” he finds comfort in happy memories of their time together.

“My biggest thing is I try to be a good person; that’s what my family is really about,” he says.

“You should cherish the people around you — cherish the moments and cherish the time — and don’t wait to fix things up.

“Because you don’t realise until it happens you might not ever see that person again.”