Dear Friends,
A. Melvin Miller was elected to the Living Legends Board in 2013. He was such an important addition that we scheduled our board meetings around his other meeting commitments—not on the second and last Tuesdays of each month and not on the Thursday before the last Tuesday!

Melvin Miller was a gentle man and a gentleman with a brilliant mind. When he disagreed he did so in a quiet voice and with a smile. I personally sought his advice most recently when planning the MetroStage Theatre Night honoring the Alexandria Civil Rights leaders of the 60s, of which he was one.

Early on, Melvin Miller’s civil rights activism led him to become a member of a group of Alexandria African Americans who met regularly to study issues affecting their community and work to improve the situation. The group was called the Secret Seven. “We didn’t give ourselves that name,” he said. We were actually eight. We think it was an FBI informer who named us after infiltrating the group,” he said. “Nobody was in charge, but we agreed we would have one spokesperson. I was mostly that person.”

Melvin Miller was the last remaining member of the Alexandria Secret Seven.

You can read more about Melvin Miller on our website and in the Alexandria Gazette.

May you rest well, dear friend. Your contributions have made a great and lasting difference to our town.

Very best wishes,
Nina Tisara
Founder, Living Legends of Alexandria

Marga Fripp, 2015 Living Legend of Alexandria, has announced “After thirteen exceptional years of building Empowered Women International, EWI, I am stepping down as the Executive Director at the end of June 2015….My family and I will be relocating to Geneva. My husband, Jesse, will continue his work in international development. I plan to work on writing a book on the story of EWI, and to also continue my life’s mission to empower women globally.

John Porter, who has served since 2009 as president and CEO of ACT, is Volunteer Alexandria’s 2015 Nonprofit Leader of the Year. Under Porter’s leadership, ACT successfully created an online day of giving to support more than 100 local nonprofit agencies raising almost $2 million within its first three years. Porter was named a Living Legend of Alexandria in 2010.

2015 Living Legend of Alexandria Nina Tisara is exhibiting her mosaic art at Convergence, 1801 N. Quaker Lane, through May 31. Although Tisara is best known for her photography and most recently as founder of Living Legends, she has been creating mosaics of porcelain tile for the last six years. The exhibition, “Intricacies,” is open to the public Fridays 10:00 am to 5:00 pm and Saturdays 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Convergence, a 501C(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2006, is a creative community of people who value diversity, exploration, and spirituality. Believing that imagination, creativity, and the arts are spiritual matters and their cultivation is of benefit to the church, the local community.

Commonwealth Academy students made such an impression on Living Legends of Alexandria Founder Nina Tisara at last April’s Day of Remembrance at Market Square that she asked them if they would help chronicle the lives of the 2015 Legends. The interviews are now completed and we are excited to see the final product—a video that will be aired for the first time at the Meet the Legends reception on March 19. In the photo, 2015 Legend Gayle Reuter is seen being interviewed in the art classroom.