Whatever happened to ... man who received cornea of teen killed in DUI crash?

A second miracle happened after Andre Jones received a cornea last year from Alison Kunhardt, one of the teens killed in Virginia Beach by an illegal immigrant driving drunk.

Jones got his muse back.

The son and grandson of pastors, Jones always wound up in their churches when nothing was going on.

"I gravitated to the instruments," he joked. "I didn't gravitate to the brooms."

Jones developed a music ministry, but when he lost his vision, he also seemed to lose some of his inspiration.

"If I'm not happy, I'm not creating," he said. "The bittersweet miracle brought me back."

The cornea transplant allowed Jones to see for the first time in a decade, and it gave him a new incentive to compose.

He founded a performing arts ministry, Sacred Assembly, and began writing.

His music doesn't fit categories, he said: I t's part gospel, part Christian contemporary, mixed with some jazz.

"I'm a mutt," he joked.

One of the first songs he wrote was "Thank You, Alison," a paean of appreciation to the young girl whose death gave him his vision.

That will be one of the songs Jones and his group will perform Sunday in a live recording session for his CD "Status is Changing" at Freedom Fellowship Church, 836 Regency Drive, in Virginia Beach.

Although he lives in Portsmouth, Jones picked the Beach church so the families of those who died in the crash wouldn't have as far to travel.

The doors will open at 5 p.m., he said. He hopes plenty of people will come.

Jones, who says he hates to sing his own works, will be at the microphone for Alison.

"How do you get someone else to sing a thing that is so personal? " Jones asked.

"I'll do it for her," he said, and for her parents and the parents of Tessa Tranchant, 16, who also was killed in the crash that made national headlines and fueled a debate over illegal immigration.

The driver, Alfredo Ramos, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated involuntary manslaughter. He will serve a 24-year prison sentence and then be deported back to Mexico.

Jones said his music speaks about being grateful and being steadfast.

"I just like to encourage people not to stop hoping," he said.

"People are so fickle. If things are good, there's a God. If things are bad, there's no God. They're kinda conditional, but He's not."

That kind of faith, Jones said, is what got him through his decade of blindness. He also found solace in music, from movie scores and advertising jingles to the hum of a fan in a particular key.

Jones faces a second corneal transplant to deal with his keratoconus. He's not anxious.

"Life has been pretty good with one eye," he said.

Tony Germanotta, (757) 222-5113, tony.germanotta@pilotonline.com