What We Think: Valdosta’s very own shining light

July 01, 2009 11:20 pm

— Last week amidst the hubbub of celebrity deaths, Valdosta lost one of its own shining lights. Mildred M. Hunter did not record gold records or star in a television show. She was not internationally known. But our part of the world would not be the same without her.
“Her family will miss her, but we will all grieve her loss,” family friend Gerone Anderson said of Hunter’s passing last week. “She was a booster for everybody.”
As a teacher, a community leader, an advocate, Mildred M. Hunter’s life affected thousands of people throughout South Georgia. Her positive instruction influenced generations. The community center in her name will influence thousands more young people for generations to come.
Born in the early 1920s, she saw many changes in her lifetime. A Valdosta native, she witnessed and experienced life before and after the civil rights movement.
She thrilled in the positive effects of those changes. “Oh, it was so exciting to me,” Hunter said in 2007. “It was exciting that I could just go any place I wanted to. It was liberating to go to these places that once were not open to you. I can go anywhere I want to in Valdosta and feel comfortable.”
She was one of the people in the community who helped soothe the transition from segregation to integration in Valdosta.
Yet, Mildred Hunter believed younger generations should understand what life was like before the civil rights era. She was a motivating sponsor of the city’s annual Martin Luther King commemoration.
Motivation was a key to her life experience and her teaching. Her father died when she was 10 years old in 1933. Still, her mother vowed that young Mildred and her three siblings would all attend college. All four did, and Mildred eventually earned a master’s degree from Valdosta State.
While the world remembers celebrities who touch lives in distant ways, a community must remember the people who touch our lives in real and everyday ways.
Mildred Hunter was one such person.
At 6 p.m. today, a public memorial service will be held for Mildred Hunter at the Mildred Hunter Center, 509 S. Fry St. Her funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday, Macedonia First Baptist Church.