A year after delivering vehicles to Ukrainian soldiers, Little Rock man working to send more

Stan Miller has a goal.

The "70-something" estate planning attorney based in Little Rock wants to travel the world, visiting 100 countries in his lifetime.

Raised on a dairy farm in Hot Springs, by the time Miller went to college at Arkansas Tech, "the only place I had been in the world outside of Arkansas was Oklahoma for three days to visit some relatives. I had been nowhere."

Miller's love of travel was sparked in his early 40s when as a Hot Springs city board member he developed a sister city relationship with Hanamaki, Japan, and he traveled to visit it.

"Just the whole experience of being in a foreign country, it was like addictive for me," Miller said.

So far, the addiction has led to Miller checking off 43 countries in his travels.

Unlike most of the first 42, the 43rd country came with real life stakes.

Four months ago, Miller found himself part of an 11-car convoy racing across war torn Ukraine.

One day in early February, Miller's wife, Patrice, threw him a party at their house.

About 35 people attended the "going away" party, said Miller, making air quotations to emphasize his point.

"'Going away party', like 'you're going to die,'" Miller said.

The next day Miller left for Europe on the first leg of a trip that would take him to Ukraine, the country in the middle of a year-long battle to repel a Russian invasion, the largest military ground war since World War II.

After a brief stay in Helsinki, Finland, Miller took a two-hour ferry ride across the Baltic Sea to Estonia.

Then, like the red line on a map in the Indiana Jones movies, Miller traveled south through Latvia, Lithuania and Poland en route to Ukraine.

However, Miller wasn't alone and he wasn't seeing the sights.

He, along with 19 others -- including volunteers from Belgium, Finland and Ukraine -- were driving 11 used SUVs filled with supplies that they would deliver to Ukrainian soldiers in Kiev.

How did a Little Rock estate planning attorney wind up in this situation, driving by bombed out apartments and one night finding himself in an underground shelter as air raid sirens sounded throughout the capital city?

It started with essentially a newsletter.

"One of the things I kind of fell into investing in is a real estate investment trust," Miller said. "And so I subscribe to these different services."

One of them is Seeking Alpha, a stock market analysis website.

"One day ... I'm reading about real estate investment trusts and right in the middle of the article, it stops. And there's a picture of this guy with a bunch of Ukrainian soldiers in front of a truck. It said 'have you contributed [to] our car convoy campaign?'"

The picture was in an article written by a Finnish investment analyst named Jussi Askola, who lives and works in Estonia and had been an intelligence officer in the country's military reserves.

Miller had read his writings for roughly a year when he saw the promotion for the convoy.

"I can't tell you why, but in the moment, it just struck me as something that's really interesting, that he's doing this," said Miller, who eventually connected with Askola via a WhatsApp conversation.

"He said, 'There was a time not that many decades ago when the Russians attacked Finland, and they claimed it was actually the Finns that attacked the Russians,'" Miller recalled. "He said, 'So, the day Putin invaded Ukraine, I realized I had to do something.' But also his view is that if Putin succeeded at actually getting Ukraine to collapse and take it over, 'who's next?' And he says, 'I know who's next and it's us.'"

Askola and his partner, Ragnar Sass, eventually settled on acquiring vehicles for Ukrainian foot soldiers to use.

Miller would ultimately buy two trucks for a convoy.

Miller didn't just leave it at paying for the cars. He wanted to make sure the cars got to their destination and volunteered to drive one of the SUVs.

"I wanted to kind of be there when we handed the keys [over]," Miller said. "It was partly, I guess, a need for adventure. These were countries I'd never been to and so I decided to do it. My wife threw a fit."

He also received an earful from his son, Jonathan, a former Navy aviator and Top Gun instructor.

"He called me up. He yelled at me. I mean it's not even pleasant," Miller said. "'You obviously have a death wish. I've called my friends at the Pentagon. I've called my friends at the CIA. This is incredibly dangerous. I can't believe you're doing this.'"

With the help of a friend, Miller said he eventually got in touch with an Army general who "was pretty familiar with the lay of the land there."

The general said "Honestly, I don't think it's that dangerous. The risk is really Russian rockets.'"

Added Miller, "But that's a noble risk."

CARS FOR UKRAINE

Four months after his whirlwind trip to a war zone, Miller is a busy man.

"I'm stressed, I've got too many balls in air right now," Miller said.

Sitting in the conference room in Pinnacle Legacy Law's office suite on Thursday, Miller ticked off the things that are pulling him in multiple directions.

He's "creating a new law firm to do this specific thing, I've got the Legacy Leaders Network, this law firm [Pinnacle Legacy Law], and I've got two or three initiatives here that are significant. I've got this study abroad foundation that we started at Arkansas Tech."

Amid all of that, he's still working to send more cars to Ukraine.

Tuesday night at 6 p.m., Miller will hold a fundraising event in Conway at The Max Event Venue that will also be livestreamed.

Those attending will have the chance to meet Ukrainian refugees who are now living in Arkansas.

Miller will also present pre-recorded interviews with Askola and Gen. Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to contribute to the convoy cause, from the purchase of a whole car, to the purchase of a spare tire or portable generator.

The money generated by the event will be stored in an Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts [IOLTA] at Stone Bank, which is located on the ground floor of the office building where Pinnacle Legacy Law is located in West Little Rock.

According to the American Bar Association, an IOLTA account is a "method of raising money for charitable purposes, primarily the provision of civil legal services to indigent persons."

Using the IOLTA account "means that all the money goes into this law firm's account, but it's not the law firm's money," Miller said. "The money actually is owned by whoever your client is. So we set up a separate client trust account just for this. ... Whenever I sent money over before back in January, because I was sending money before I went, so they could have the money to buy the truck. I had to wire it internationally, and I ran into a bunch of technical glitches. And I figured it also costs something to do that and I didn't want to have small contributors have to go through the exercise of doing foreign wire transfers. ... The money goes into this account at Stone Bank, and then what I'll do is aggregate that money and then wire it over to Estonia.

"I'll handle the hassle of the wire transfer."

THE GOOD FIGHT

Miller is a student of history, having graduated from Arkansas Tech with a degree in it.

To him, Ukraine's more-than-year-long struggle against Russia is the "clearest juxtaposition of good versus evil that I've seen in my lifetime. I just felt like you can't just sit by and do nothing. If there's something I can do that can make a difference and have an impact, don't I kind of have to do that? And I feel like I can do this."

Of course, there's the argument from some Americans that the country shouldn't be making the effort to bolster Ukraine and the claim that Ukraine is somehow in the wrong.

"I was a history major and I wasn't around then, but I read about it," Miller said. "Sounds like the whole America First movement that predated World War II and it took the Pearl Harbor attack to finally break us out of that. And then America led and we were singularly instrumental in winning the war."

To Miller, the Ukraine-Russia war "isn't that different" from what Europe experienced 80 years ago.

He sees Russian President Vladimir Putin as "a guy who's vindicating an ego need, a need to build an empire or rebuild an empire" while the Ukrainians, including everyday people who "quit their day jobs working for tech companies, engineers, waiters," are "fighting for their lives" to remain free.

Miller gets reminders of what he's contributing to.

Sitting in a seventh floor office at Pinnacle Legacy Law, Miller thumbs through photos and videos on his phone.

Some he took himself during his four days in Ukraine, including of the convoy and bombed out buildings he came across.

Others are videos sent by the very soldiers the convoys benefited.

He eventually brings up a video that's stuck with him.

It shows about 15 Ukrainian soldiers standing in front of an armored military vehicle. Two soldiers hold their unit's flag.

Another soldier, the one holding the camera, delivers a speech that serves as a plea for donations to help pay for more vehicles like the ones Miller helped delivered.

"This is an appeal to cities of the United States," the soldier says. "We thank you for your support of Ukraine at this difficult time. In the west, you have freedom. We also want to be free. We don't want to be controlled by a dictator from another country. ...

"If Russia stops fighting, the war is going to end," the soldier adds. "If we Ukrainians stop fighting, Ukraine will end."

A convoy of used cars, including some paid for by Stan Miller, drive on a highway on their way to be delivered to Ukrainian soldiers in this submitted photo. (Photo courtesy of Stan Miller)