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 Pat Hardison (Photo: Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) 
 
 MEMPHIS — If anyone believes in miracles, it’s Pat Hardison, the Senatobia volunteer fireman who received the world’s most extensive face transplant two years ago. I told the doctor that, I’d rather be dead than live like I was,” Hardison said. “Thank you for being so strong and so healthy,” Millar told Hardison as they embraced. When I knew you were a firefighter I knew you had the strength to go through this.” 
 
 “Beautiful,” Hardison said. Follow Wayne Risher on Twitter: @gwrisher 
 
 CLOSE “It’s like she’s family,” Patrick Hardison — the first extensive face transplant recipient — said of meeting Nancy Millar, his donor’s mom Time 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2yAXlpL “I would have given anything to be there,” Millar said. At 27, he was a successful salesman who ran the family tire business, but his real passion was working with the local volunteer fire department where he was a captain. On Sept. 5, 2001, Hardison and his fellow firefighters responded to a house fire, and when they arrived, he entered the building with three other firefighters. I went to Disney World last year and it’s the first time my two little boys had been anywhere where people didn’t say, ‘What happened?’ and all that stuff. His eyelids and ears were gone. He underwent more than 70 surgeries over the next decade to try to rebuild his mouth, nose and eyelids using skin grafts. Courtesy Hardison Family 
 
 Unable to have the life he wanted, Hardison became withdrawn and depressed. More: Face transplant gives new hope to Mississippi firefighter 
 
 The surgery took 26 hours and a team of more than 100 medical professionals led by Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez, who specializes in reconstructive surgery at New York University Langone Medical Center. But it was a risk he was willing to take for the chance to get his life back and get closer to feeling normal again. Face transplant recipient Pat Hardison, 43, poses for a portrait before speaking at the Mid-South Transplant Foundation's annual "Celebration of Life" event at the Memphis Botanic Garden on Oct. 22, 2017. “Just all that stuff that I thought would never be in my life again,” he said. “The donors and the families, you can’t imagine the thank you’s and gratitude that people like me owe you all for that gift.
– There was only a 50% chance the face transplant that could transform his life would work—and it was a gamble Mississippi's Pat Hardison won. Per USA Today, the ex-Senatobia firefighter received the "world's most extensive face transplant" in August 2015, after he'd been severely burned 14 years earlier while fighting a house fire. A team of more than 100 medical staff took part in the groundbreaking surgery, which took more than 24 hours, in which Hardison received the face of 26-year-old David Rodebaugh, who'd died in a cycling accident. Though he'd faced a good chance of dying from the procedure, Hardison's decision to "bet it all" paid off. On Sunday, the 43-year-old took a turn as guest speaker for an organ transplant group to express his gratitude. The transplant "gave me life," Hardison said in his speech for the Mid-South Transplant Foundation's "Celebration of Life" event. He noted he's able to go places now with his kids (they hit Disney World in 2016) and that people usually have no idea from looking at him that he's had a face transplant. "It's the first time my two little boys had been anywhere where people didn't say, 'What happened?' … They could tell something had happened, but nobody ever looked at me and said, 'He got a face transplant.' Another momentous occasion last November: Hardison met Rodebaugh's mom. After studying "every angle" of Hardison's new face, per ABC News—even finding an old chicken pox scar she remembered her son had had on his forehead—Nancy Millar told Hardison, "I am as proud of you as I was of my own son. It's not David's face, it's your face."