A Nike Executive Seeks a Family’s Forgiveness for a 1965 Murder

Mr. Miller kept apologizing, she said, and at times tears welled in his eyes.

At the end of the meeting, Mrs. Mack said in an interview on Sunday, Mr. Miller asked if he could hug her and she said yes. But she said she also told him, “If I was 30 years younger, I would have been across that table at you.”

She did not attend the second meeting.

“I don’t have to see him anymore,” she said of Mr. Miller.

In an interview on Monday. Mr. Miller declined to describe the meeting in detail, saying that he wanted to let the family share their perspective first. But he said that it was emotional and that he hoped Mr. White’s family felt his “remorse and sorrow for what happened.”

As for Mrs. Mack saying that if she were younger she would have gone after him, “it was an appropriate comment from my perspective,” Mr. Miller said.

A second meeting last week included preliminary discussions about Mr. Miller establishing a scholarship foundation in Mr. White’s name, funded in perpetuity, that would assist his descendants and perhaps others in attending college or trade school, according to the family and their lawyer, Ronald L. Marrero.

Such a scholarship foundation would provide opportunities for family members and demonstrate that Mr. White “did not die in vain,” said Mrs. Arline, his daughter, adding that Mr. Miller’s words must be followed by actions. “I will call him on the carpet every single time,” she said, to ensure “that this legacy for my father comes to fruition.”

Mr. Miller said the details had not been worked out, but that “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.”

At the December meeting, Mr. Adams, 56, Mr. White’s son, also told Mr. Miller that he forgave him, family members said. He spoke of the number 21 being important in the family’s life, as the date of several birthdays, including his and his father’s, and the number worn on sports jerseys in memoriam. He spoke of the shock and pain of only recently learning the details of his father’s murder and of having to grieve for the first time for a death that happened when he was a toddler. He spoke of going through life being told that he looked like his father’s ghost.