ODESSA, Texas — On October 5, 2014, Hunter Miller was driving in a car with his friend. The car was driving at 98 mph in a 35-mile-per-hour zone. It struck a car that just so happened to be pulling out of its driveway.
Days later, Hunter Miller was killed. A tragic accident, his mother Jill Miller said.
However, he was able to help out other people in his life by registering as an organ donor when he was filling out his paperwork at the DMV to get his driver's license.
Initially, he was confused as to what the little box meant. When it was clarified, he didn't hesitate to check the box.
“Hunter had these big blue eyes, and I said, no, it means you could give somebody your eyes and they could see if something ever happened to you," Jill Miller said. "He goes, 'well, then check the box, because that [will] give somebody the shirt off my back if they needed it'... and so we checked the box.”
That selflessness is why a mural was unveiled outside of the Odessa Housing Finance Corporation building Wednesday.
Done by a local artist, the mural displays things that were close to him, such as the American Flag, a hockey puck and various phrases that he said throughout his life.
The most important piece of the mural, however, may be the words "Donate Life."
Organ donors can save a minimum of seven lives as an individual and upwards of 80.
For Hunter Miller, his blue eyes were able to restore sight to someone who had waited five years for it. The rest of his organs were able to be donated as well, which is why Jill Miller continues to preach about organ donation to this day.
“There is a lady that was blind for five years that can see," Jill Miller said. "We did donate all his organs and his tissue and his eyes, and because we had that conversation, I preached a lot about organ donation and how important it is to have the conversations in your family.”
It’s exactly how he would want to be remembered.
He had a larger than life personality who loved people as much as he did life itself and he always tried to spread that message of love and kindness to everyone he met.
“If he could advocate and say anything, he would say, give somebody the shirt off your back, because he would have done that," Jill Miller said. "He would give somebody the shirt off his back. He would tell somebody to be kind. He would tell people to say, you love them every chance you get, because that's what he did.”
At the mural unveiling, Jill Miller preached about the importance of organ donation. It was not the only cause she was rallying for, however.
Car accidents happen almost every day in the Permian Basin. Jill Miller believes that many of those accidents could be prevented if people were to just take the extra minute or two to get where they are going.
“If it takes one extra minute and nobody dies, then it takes one extra minute. If I could do anything to have my kid back and they would've just slowed down, then the accident wouldn't have happened," Jill Miller said. "So if you just slow down, then you'll save someone's life. We don't have to talk about donating organs because if you just slow down, you'll get to the same place."