TERRE HAUTE — A new shelter at Washington Park on South 13th Street was dedicated Friday to honor the late Chuck Miles, a former Terre Haute City Councilman and community leader.
The Chuck Miles Memorial Shelter covers four wooden picnic tables and a concrete floor. The shelter also has an outdoor grill. It was built at a cost of about $5,000 and paid from the city’s Department of Redevelopment. The city’s park department built the shelter and poured its concrete base.
Family members and city officials gathered around the shelter after its dedication, including Miles’ sons, Trent and Todd.
“It’s an honor to realize that so many people recognize the things that he did and his accomplishments in trying to make this a better place. It is a humbling experience,” said Trent Miles, who is head football coach at Indiana State University.
“I know on behalf of my family and my mom, it couldn’t be a bigger honor to us that people cared about my dad that way and wanted to honor his memory and efforts to make it a better place,” Miles said.
“I think my dad would be honored, but would be humbled,” Miles said. “I have a picture from 1938 when he went to school right across the street there at Booker T. Washington. He spent many a year playing ball in this area when he was younger and this is the district he served while on the city council, so this is very fitting.”
Chuck Miles died at age 74 in April 2007. He served on the Terre Haute City Council for 12 years, elected as a Democrat to the District 6 seat in 1995. He also served on the Vigo County School Board from 1992 to 1995.
He worked as personnel director at the former CBS plant in Terre Haute and later as director of human resources and marketing at Terre Haute Regional Hospital.
Miles also volunteered for years as a coach for area baseball, basketball and football teams and served as a referee and umpire.
That’s something Mayor Duke Bennett recalls first hand.
“When I was 20 years old, I got into officiating. Back in those days, you had to have someone step up and say you were qualified to do this and you were of the right character to do this,” Bennett said.
“My dad was good friends with Chuck,” Bennett said, adding his father said Miles had been officiating for years. “All you had to do was just sign the name, but that is not what Chuck did. He came to watch me officiate a game at the Boys Club to make sure, that if he was signing his name on there, that I was worthy of that. That is just the kind of guy that he was, he took that extra step.”
Cliff Lambert, director of the Terre Haute Department of Redevelopment, served with Miles, who was African American, on the city council. “What I appreciate about Chuck was it never came down to race, about black or white. He looked to all the members of our community. He in his civic activism, generally made an effort to assist everybody and pull all of us up …,” Lambert said.
“Chuck’s efforts were and his legacy will be that the youth who come to this place will find their welfare — and a commitment to their opportunity to envision a brighter future — shared by a community of individuals Chuck inspired to champion his cause,” Lambert said.
Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger
@tribstar.com.
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New shelter honors former city councilman Chuck Miles
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