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One of Birmingham's most stalwart matriarchs, greatest cheerleaders and best friends have gone home to glory. Edna Miller Gardner, mother of 5, grandmother (Mamu) to 9, was known to her community as a teacher, AKA Soror and most enthusiastic Hampton University alumna. To others, the proud East St. Louis native was a PIONEER of Desegregation as one University of Alabama's first Black graduate students, devoted Sixth Avenue Baptist Church faithful matron, and, 20th Century Club's gallant member. Known as the city's longest-serving Jack and Jill member, she was also a past president of the Birmingham Links, a former Owl's Club spouse member, and a devoted member of the Smithfield community. Professionally, Mrs. Gardner was Smith & Gaston Funeral Services' most requested Directress and Lawson State Community College and Booker T. Washington Business College's most beloved instructor. Born in Boston Massachusetts, in 1925, you would never know it by her ever-so-recognizable southern lilt. She was the eldest and only daughter of educators, Ross Matthew Miller and Beatrice Burson Miller, and moved with her parents and younger brother, Ross Jr., to East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1930. Her mother finished Howard University in 1916 and her father, Florida A&M and the University of Illinois, but Edna was determined to chart her own course. She attended Hampton Institute in Hampton Virginia, majoring in business education. Promptly after graduation in May 1946, she boarded a train to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a summer job at Booker T. Washington Business College. While she planned to stay only for the summer, fate had another plan. Her employer, Mrs. Minnie Gaston, sent her brother, Thomas Gardner, to pick up the new teachers from the train station. She has been in Birmingham ever since! They married in December 1947, adding five children to their union. Edna remained at Booker T. Washington Business College for twenty years, then moved to Lawson State Community College for more than twenty more. Teaching was her passion, but education was just one part of her story. While helping her students, she also pursued her own advanced education, raised her children, and helped her husband promote and build Smith & Gaston Funeral Services, Inc., working alongside him for over 30 years until his death in 1993. She pursued advanced education courses at New York University in 1960, a Master's degree from the University of Alabama in 1966, and later a post-graduate AA degree from Alabama A&M University. She became an Alabama licensed funeral director and later continued working alongside her sons at Smith and Gaston Funeral Services. She was a PROLIFIC photographer who captured and chronicled both pivotal and mundane moments of so many lives and shared them with so many. Also an avid traveler, she enjoyed the distinction of being affectionately heralded as "Mama" or "Mama Edna" throughout her travels through Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico, Egypt, Israel, China, as well as the U.S. As we bid farewell, she will not only live forever in our hearts and minds but also in the lives of deserving students at her beloved Hampton University.