Bert and Ina's Girls' Fund

Bert and Ina were two of the most powerfully important influences in Robin Miller-Godwin’s life. 

Alberta “Bert” Teague Williams, Robin’s maternal grandmother, was one of 18 children, born in 1902. A strong woman, Bert was mother of 13, hard-working, deeply faithful, stern, yet very loving. While she didn’t have a formal education, she encouraged all of her children and grandchildren to pursue theirs. 

Robin’s paternal grandmother was Ina “Granny” Flanagan Miller. Born 18 years after Bert, Ina sought an education and became a nurse’s aide before further studying psychiatry to become a psychiatric nurse’s aide, working for years in the field. While Bert had 45 grandchildren to love, Ina had one – Robin. 

For many years both women were rooted in their New Haven communities, Bert in Dixwell and Ina in the Newhallville neighborhood. Alberta went to work after her husband died in 1948. “Bert was a cook and she and a friend had a restaurant,” Robin said. The restaurant was a gathering place, and Bert made certain that families who were in need did not go hungry. 

Ina, who was married 67 years, tended not only to her patients but also to people in her neighborhood who might be struggling with their mental health. “She was always able to calm and center someone who needed it,” Robin said. She became known as “everyone’s Granny.” 

Bert moved from New Haven to live with one of her sons in California. When Robin was very young, her father and mother separated, and she and her mother moved to California to live with Bert. 

“My grandmother Bert wanted to make sure that I had very close ties to my grandmother Ina in Connecticut and to my father,” Miller-Godwin said. “So, every six months she would take me to Connecticut to be with them."

To keep her grandmothers’ memories alive, Miller-Godwin established the Bert and Ina's Girls' Fund at The Community Foundation. She hopes to support an organization that works to combat hunger in the Dixwell neighborhood and a program providing mental health care for residents of the Newhallville community. 

Miller-Godwin has long been connected to The Community Foundation as a member of the Delta Foundation, where she created a fund in memory of her mother. That fund supports maternal health programs, particularly ones that focus on young mothers. She was also an inaugural member of The Community Foundation’s Vineyard Project which “recognizes and amplifies the vibrant Black history and culture of our local community and encourages Black philanthropy.”

Her hope is that the Bert and Ina's Girls' Fund helps the Newhallville and Dixwell communities to thrive. “My grandparents left a legacy of home ownership, of working hard and caring for their communities, of always opening their homes to friends, family or neighbors in need,” she said. “I want the fund to help to foster that kind of caring for your neighbor.” 

Her grandmother Bert grew ill when Miller-Godwin was just 11. “I helped take care of her as she had for me,” she said. “She had three daughters and five of her sons in L.A. and we all needed to pull together to provide 24-hour care until she passed. I learned what it meant to care for those you love.” 

“I couldn’t honor one of my grandmothers without the other,” she explained. “My life was intertwined with both of those women, and I am the person I am today because of them.” Her Grandmother Ina lived a long life and was able to be part of Miller-Godwin’s two children’s lives, always there to help.

Miller-Godwin, who manages the president’s office and the communications team for the Housing Authority of the City of New Haven, will encourage her children to become part of the fund, sharing their ideas about the ways it can support the community.

She recently became a grandmother and that has only deepened her connection to her family history. “It’s brought back how my grandmothers mothered me,” she said. “My granddaughter Harper Grace is just seven months old but already she is everything! When I look at her, I see my legacy.”

“With this fund, I want the world to know that those two remarkable women - my grandmothers were here and that they lived beautiful lives.”