Mayor Launches ‘Meet Your Neighbor!’ Event Series By Celebrating Gladys Miles, 93

On Sunday Mayor Victor Gordo will host the first in a new series of gatherings he plans to hold across the city called ‘Meet Your Neighbor!’  The premiere is set for 3:30 p.m. when he introduces his neighbor, 93-year-old Gladys Miles, on his home’s front lawn at 1025 N. Madison Ave.

Miles has lived on Jackson Street in the heart of Pasadena’s Orange Heights-Barnhart Historic District for 57 years, since 1964. 

“Gladys has many memories only she has and only she can share. She has many stories to tell about how our neighborhood and our city have changed across the decades. We invite you to come and hear her and her son Sheldon Miles, who was raised on Jackson Street, bring history to life,” the announcement for the Mayor’s event says.

Gladys Miles was born in 1928 at 53 W. Claremont, exactly 1.2 miles from where she lives now. 

But back when she was young, she recounts, there was a virtual line between where she was born and her current residence, a line that you didn’t cross if you were Black, and that line was Fair Oaks Avenue. 

You went east of Fair Oaks Avenue after dark, Miles recalls, and you were likely to be asked “What are you doing over here?”

According to the announcement, Gladys says she had a great childhood and took the famous Red Line streetcars all over. She trained to become a beauty operator. She married Ray Miles in 1948.

Miles has been a property owner and developer, a devoted wife, a teacher, a mother, and a steward of her handsome two-story home. 

The event is free and open to the public.