By 1979, Richard Miller’s world had shrunk into silence. At age 34, he was a widower: his beloved wife Anne had died two years earlier after a prolonged illness. Their home, once filled with plans and laughter, now stood hollow and still. In the nights, Richard sat under a single yellow bulb, staring at peeling wallpaper, haunted by the ticking of the clock. Friends urged him to remarry, to fill the emptiness, but he was bound by Anne’s dying plea: “Don’t let love die with me. Give it somewhere to go.”

One rainy evening, his old pickup broke down near St. Mary’s Orphanage. He entered to use the phone, only to be drawn deeper by crying. In a dim hallway he discovered a room of cribs — nine baby girls, dark‑skinned and nameless, abandoned together. Their cries layered into a heartbreaking chorus. A nurse explained they had been left on church steps, wrapped in one blanket, with no identifying note. Many adopters would take one or two; no one came for all nine, and the staff feared they would be separated.

The nurse gently warned that raising nine infants alone was impossible: financially, physically, socially. People would call him crazy. But Anne’s promise echoed in Richard’s heart. As he neared the cribs, one baby stared into his eyes, another reached for his sleeve, a third smiled. In that instant something inside him gave way. The emptiness he’d carried turned into a living weight of responsibility — a chance to pour love forward rather than let it perish.