‘She was our spirit’: Remembering history-making Charlottean Mildred Smith Grier
Anthony Smith looked out at the crowd of mourners at First Baptist Church-West on Beatties Ford Road in Charlotte on Saturday and talked about his beloved aunt Mildred.
“She was everything I wanted to be,” he said of his 100-year-old aunt, Mildred Smith Grier. “She was the perfect role model.”
And when they endlessly talked on the phone about anything and everything, she’d finally say, “’’OK, I have to get off the phone now,’” Smith said to scattered laughs. “And we’d be on the phone another hour.”
“I will miss her dearly,” he said.
Mildred Smith Grier, who made Charlotte history as a member of Second Ward High School’s first 12th grade class and later as among the first women to graduate from Johnson C. Smith University, died on Saturday, March 9, after a brief illness.
“We just loved Second Ward”
Grier, a retired educator, grew up in Third Ward and walked — even in the worst of weather — with her six brothers each day to Second Ward High.
The school opened in the former Brooklyn neighborhood in 1923 as the first Black public high school in Charlotte.
Her mother had lunch ready when they returned home, Grier told The Charlotte Observer last year for an article titled, “How generations of Second Ward alumni thrived at Charlotte’s first Black high school.”
Grier and her brothers played school in their backyard, imitating the teachers they met at Second Ward, she said.
The school was her first taste of what became her profession.
About making history as part of the school’s first 12th grade class, she said: “I should have finished high school in 1940. But they put on one more year.”
Educators at the school went above and beyond for their students, she said.
“We just loved Second Ward,” Grier told the Observer.
100th birthday celebration
Grier entered Johnson C. Smith University in 1941 and is still regarded as “one of our most precious jewels,” JCSU posted on Facebook Friday.
“The school .community mourns the loss of beloved alumna, Mildred Grier,” the school posted on Facebook.
Grier and her late husband, Joe, also were among the first residents of McCrorey Heights, according to the university. The neighborhood was “founded in 1912 by H.L. McCrorey and developed for JCSU preachers and teachers in the 1950s,” according to the JCSU Facebook post.
During the school’s 2023 reunion weekend, “the JCSU alumni were grateful to celebrate Mildred Grier on her 100th birthday,” JCSU said on Facebook.
Loyal Royal Tiger
At Saturday’s funeral, Mecklenburg County commissioner Arthur Griffin recounted Grier’s loyalty to the Second Ward High School National Alumni Foundation Inc. Griffin is president of the foundation.
“She was our spirit,” he said. “She demonstrated every asset of a Royal Tiger.”
At the Tiger Day gathering of Second Ward graduates last July, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners proclaimed July 15 “as Mildred Smith Grier’s Day,” Griffin said.
“Miss Grier represented Second Ward that day by wearing her blue and white,” he said.
And she delivered on her promise to him that day that she’d attend the school’s centennial celebration later in the year.
“She showed up in her beautiful finest,” Griffin said.
After she was honored during the centennial celebration and the event was wrapping up, Grier quipped to Griffin: “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just now getting ready to party.”
Niece Monique Smith said her aunt taught her “not to sweat the small stuff and how to be kind to folks.”
“She was the only mother I ever really knew,” Smith told the gathering at her aunt’s funeral. “It is because of her that I know the Lord and love the Lord.
“I’ve made peace with her death,” Smith said. “I know she lived a long, beautiful and abundant life. And it brings me joy that Aunt Mildred was loved and cared for by so many.”
“Rest well, Aunt Mildred,” Smith said. “I will love you forever.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2024 at 6:00 AM.