How Nike Exec Larry Miller Is Working to Make Amends with Family of Another Teen He Killed in 1965

Larry Miller is a top Nike executive, a former NBA team president for the Portland Trail Blazers and a role model to aspiring business leaders — but, as he revealed in recent months, a violent mistake haunted him throughout his rise to success.

In a new memoir, Jump: My Secret Journey from the Streets to the Boardroom, co-written with his daughter and released in January, Miller details a drunken night when he was 16 in West Philadelphia in which he shot and killed 18-year-old Edward White, a young father on his way home from work.

"My daughter, she started working on me about this probably 13, 15 years ago and I kept saying, 'No, not going to do it, not going to do it,' " Miller, now 72, told PEOPLE last month. "But finally, the more I started to have these nightmares and migraines, it was just like, 'You know what, I got to get this out.' … I kind of felt like a burden was lifted as I was sharing more and getting more out."

Miller told Sports Illustrated in October that his life's biggest mistake had caused health issues like the severe migraines as he later tried to keep the homicide from his youth — and subsequent time served in juvenile detention and in prison — hidden from family and colleagues.

The killing was "senseless" and fueled by alcohol following the murder of another friend in 1965 during a gang fight, Miller told Sports Illustrated.

He and White, his victim, did not know one another; and White had no known gang affiliations.

"That's what makes it even more difficult for me, because it was for no reason at all," Miller told Sports Illustrated. "I mean, there was no valid reason for this to happen. And that's the thing that I really struggle with and that's — you know, it's the thing that I think about every day. It's like, I did this, and to someone who — it was no reason to do it. And that's the part that really bothers me."

Prosecutors reportedly tried Miller as an adult, but he was released after serving four-and-a-half years. He was soon sent back behind bars after trying to earn money for Nation of Islam via armed robbery, extortion and selling drugs.

During his second four-and-a-half-year prison term, Miller was able to pursue an accounting degree at Temple University through federal grants, CNN reported on Sunday.

Now, the release of a memoir so many decades later is an attempt to seek redemption and instruct others, says Miller, who was responsible for transforming the Jordan brand at Nike.

That process ultimately included White's family — though Miller had at first tried to keep them out of the headlines. According to The New York Times, White's family said they felt "blindsided" by the book's publication because Miller had never reached out to them.

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Miller has explained that he hoped to protect the privacy of his victim, whom he did not name in his book, and that of White's relatives. But they became a part of his amends.

Miller has had two closed-door meetings with the family, though he declined to describe the details of the exchange beyond saying it was "emotional" and that White's family gave him their forgiveness, according to the Times.

Miller and White's survivors are also in the process of establishing a scholarship foundation for White's descendants and possibly others to attend college or trade school, the Times reported in January.

"I think we have agreed that we wanted to do something that allows his name to live on and something that also is a benefit and positive to other folks that come from our community," Miller told the paper then.

The family said in a statement to CNN that "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."

Miller told CNN this week that "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. 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."

Aside from seeking forgiveness for killing White, Miller has said he wants his book to be a source of transformation in the way society sees formerly incarcerated people — and inspiration for those currently or formerly in detention.

He also hopes it will keep other youth with circumstances like his own from committing crimes.

"It's really about making sure that people understand that formerly incarcerated people can make a contribution," he told Sports Illustrated. "And that a person's mistake, or the worst mistake that they made in their life, shouldn't control what happens with the rest of your life."