At 16, Larry Miller killed another teen. At 72, the Nike executive is ready to apologize
Miller has met White's relatives twice, according to Ronald Marrero, an attorney representing the White family who hosted the meetings at his office. Marrero said Miller apologized for not reaching out prior to publishing the book. Barbara Mack, White's sister, said she forgave him, explaining, "I must forgive in order to be forgiven," the attorney said.
Boakyewaa Lawrencia 
The amazing arc of Larry Miller's life is shown by two fortuitous encounters on the same West Philadelphia street corner. As a drunk and enraged 16-year-old, his first crime resulted in the murder of another adolescent. The second, 56 years later as a recognized corporate leader, brand visionary, and Michael Jordan's friend, provided him with a new opportunity to seek redemption.
Miller kept his criminal background hidden for decades as he progressed through the business ranks, most notably as the CEO of Nike's Jordan Brand and as the president of the Portland Trail Blazers NBA franchise.
He claims he had horrible migraines and nightmares until he chose to open up about his entire life, not just the part that he spent in the spotlight.
"I had nightmares of going back to jail regularly," he tells CNN. "I had terrible migraine headaches, and I'm sure it was all because I was trying to hold it all in and afraid it would spill out. There was always a sense of stress and fear that something might come out and damage everything I'd worked so hard to achieve."
When he authored a book on his incredible life experience, the tension dissipated, and he hopes that sharing about his redemption will provide a new perspective on formerly jailed people.
That's why he's at the corner of 53rd and Locust, where he committed his most heinous crime: murdering another person. He hopes that by telling his experience to the public and in his new book "Jump: My Secret Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom," he would be able to reach a child today and prevent him from doing something he will regret, or teach an incarcerated person that there is life after jail.
Miller admits that he doesn't recall much about the first encounter since he was under the influence of cheap alcohol and that time has dimmed his memories. But he knows he was drawn to the streets, had been active in gang life for some years, and was enraged that one of his crew members had lately been assassinated.
Miller and his friends were caught by police a short distance away before they could do any more damage.
But if Miller doesn't remember all that much, his story has become well known in West Philly and the presence of CNN cameras one cold January morning attracts some hollers and hoots from passersby and a wave from an old friend.
Then one man stops and calls out of his car. "Is this about Larry Miller and my uncle?" he asked the CNN crew. "I'm Edward White's nephew."
Edward David White was Miller's victim. He was 18, father of an 8-month-old and there was another baby on the way. He was going home from work, his family said and had no gang ties.
Tyrone Kegler never met his great uncle -- he'd been born long after the murder. He still lived in the neighborhood but was surprised to find himself suddenly about to meet the man who had caused his family so much pain, so much turmoil, for so long.
"Whoa I'm shaking," he tells CNN as he gets out of the car. "This story has just opened up a whole can of worms for us, we weren't expecting this," he says, his voice fading to a whisper.
Miller wasn't expecting it either. But he takes the second chance. He greets Kegler with a handshake and talks for a few minutes. They part with a hug.
It's one of many second chances Miller has had and made work after mistakes in his life.
He says he has thought about killing White every day of his life since it happened. It was not lost on Miller that White was a Black teenager, just like him. But Miller failed to name him in the book. He also failed to reach out to the dead man's family before he went public with his secret.
He says he thought he was protecting their privacy, but now owns his mistake. Miller acknowledges that he should have been in touch earlier. And he wants to keep making amends.
"We are definitely in the process of trying to connect with them and make sure that they feel some healing out of this as well," he says. "You know, to me, if we can come up with a way to memorialize Mr. White, so that he isn't someone that's just forgotten, then this would be a positive.
Miller has met White's relatives twice, according to Ronald Marrero, an attorney representing the White family who hosted the meetings at his office. Marrero said Miller apologized for not reaching out before publishing the book. Barbara Mack, White's sister, said she forgave him, explaining, "I must forgive to be forgiven," the attorney said.
Miller co-wrote his book with his daughter Laila Lacy, who gave him a second chance after he hurt her. When Lacy was in college, her mother died. Miller did not show up for the funeral to be by his daughter's side.
"I can't justify it," he says of his absence. "I can only say that the reason I didn't go is that I just I couldn't deal with it. I couldn't deal with the fact of what was happening. I was just trying not to deal with it at all."
"He told me he just couldn't face it," Lacy says. "Once he said it, I understood that it was just too painful for him to come to grips with the fact that she was gone."
Miller says he believes Lacy now has some understanding of why he let her down, even as she needed him there. She not only stands by him now, but she also says she is proud of the man he has become.
And much of the theme of the book is the second chances he was given -- and made the most of -- after going to prison for the murder of White.
His redemption was far from immediate. While prosecuted as an adult, he served only 4½ years before his release. He says he found a new purpose with the Nation of Islam. But he was sent back to prison when he tried to get money for the organization through armed robbery, extortion, and selling drugs, even though all of that is against Islamic teachings.
He got breaks then, too -- he calls them "blessings." He was penalized with just nine months' incarceration for violating his parole for White's murder. And his sentences for the robberies were ordered to run at the same time rather than one after another, so he served a total of another 4½ years for those.
He was also able to resume his education, first inside the prison using Pell grants available to inmates and then on a day-release program to attend college.
"That's what made me start to believe that I could change my life," he tells CNN.
"I was going to learn my way out of the lifestyle that I was living in the things that I was doing and that I was going to give education and opportunity to change my life."
Miller was smart, driven, and had a goal of working for one of the top accounting firms. He was a handshake away from that, an offer ready in the inside pocket of a hiring manager for a major firm when he says he shared the story of his murder conviction.
The offer never made it to Miller's hand because of what he revealed about his criminal past he says. So Miller decided his past should fade away, too. He wouldn't lie, but he wouldn't be fully open either.
It worked. He says the Campbell Soup Company application simply asked if he had been convicted of a crime in the last five years, so he could truthfully say no.
Many of his jobs after that didn't involve application forms, they were agreed with a handshake.
But there were moments of abject fear over his secret, followed by temporary relief, he says, like when he underwent a background check to accept a dinner invitation from the Clinton White House. Somehow he passed and found himself sitting next to first lady Hillary Clinton discussing Chinese labor issues.
Miller's night terrors about his past hit a high when he became president of the Portland Trail Blazers, then often called the Jail Blazers for the run-ins players were having with the law. But still, his criminal past stayed private, something that he acknowledges is unlikely to happen for anyone today in the age of Google and electronic records.
"I was concerned all the time that it could come out. And that's what I'm certain was causing the headaches and the nightmares because once I started sharing with my daughter, and started talking to her about all of this, and kind of getting it out, the nightmares stopped, the migraines stopped. And I know that was just letting this out," he says.
It turns out that he may not have needed to worry once he had reached those heights. While preparing to break his silence, he turned to those he knew from leading the Jordan brand at Nike -- Nike co-founder Phil Knight, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and Michael Jordan himself. To a man, he says, they supported him and his decision to speak now in the hope of stopping another teen heading into criminality or encouraging someone in or who had left prison to turn their life around, and to encourage employers to look beyond a rap sheet.
Miller says he thought every day of the young man he killed but had to push it to the back of his mind, afraid it would paralyze him, and concentrate on himself and his belief in his intelligence and ability to get by and get ahead.
"It would always pop up. But I was able to always put it in the back of my mind and try to do some positive things to help offset it," he says.
Miller has said he would like to honor White in some way. He has had decades of success but had never reached out to those he left devastated until now. White's family has asked him to establish a scholarship for students at West Philadelphia High School, where White once went.
The White family said in a statement provided by their attorney, "The family hopes that Mr. Miller is truly remorseful. The family expects that Mr. Miller's actions will further exemplify that remorse by following through with the scholarship in honor of Edward David White."
Asked what the essence of his life's memoir was, the first thing Miller says is "redemption." A story that offers not only hope but a pathway out of a cycle of violence.
As for making it up to the family of the man he gunned down, Miller has met with White's family twice. And there was that chance meeting with White's great-nephew that ended in a hug. There's still a lot to be done, but on that West Philadelphia corner on a day in January, his life had come full circle.
