Wendi Miller was a renaissance woman.
She was an artist, a framer, an activist, a scuba diver, a mean poker player, a tinkerer, a sharpshooter— and, as the owner of Miller Frame at 6020 Centre Avenue for more than 40 years—a pillar of the East Liberty community.
But to Cooper Miller she was first and foremost a loving parent.
“She was a self-made woman, in every way that you can express it,” Cooper shared. “And she was somebody that I looked up to a great deal.”
Born and raised in the Brookline neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Wendi was widely known as a picture framer, but she was also a prominent advocate for transgender and LGBTQ+ rights in Pittsburgh and beyond. After her death on April 6th, 2023, just two days before she was to receive a proclamation from the City Council of Pittsburgh for her work in the community, Cooper has now made it his mission to tell her story.
A far-reaching life, rooted in East Liberty
In 1989, Ms. Miller was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began the transition to her true identity. She joined a “cross-dressing” social club called Transpitt and by 1993 became its president. In 1994, she had gender-affirming surgery.
Due to the lack of emotional, financial, and medical support for transgender people, Wendi worked with a group of trans women to start a non-profit in 1995 called the Pittsburgh Transsexual Support Group.
6020 Centre Avenue (formerly Penn Circle South) became the hub for the group and a refuge for transgender folks that had been rejected by their loved ones and communities. Miller built living quarters in the back of the shop that served as transitional housing and gave people work when they had nowhere else to turn.
The shop found success through word of mouth and had many notable clients over the years, from Sidney Crosby to Fred Rogers. Wendi was known for handling every job with the utmost care, which is why clients would trust her with their prized possessions. A letter written by Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt advising against the use of the atomic bomb during World War II even passed through her hands.
“I think that’s why she had the prestige, because she did quality work and she never turned anything down,” Cooper told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “She believed that everyone deserved dignity.”
In 1996, Wendi took her story to the national stage, when she and Cooper appeared on an episode of The Ricki Lake Show about supporting and accepting trans people. Cooper was 14 at the time.
“She invited me, because unlike so many other people that transition who were pressured to leave their families and abandon their children, I was still part of her life,” he said. “When she came out to me, something changed. I understood who she was, and that understanding made us so much closer.”
Investing in East Liberty, before it was popular
Wendi’s trailblazing approach could also be seen in her dedication to the East Liberty community. When others were leaving the neighborhood, Wendi and Dorcas Evans-Miller, Wendi’s life partner and wife at the time, moved in and brought the arts with them.
Spending much of his youth in Miller Frame, Cooper remembers that time well.
“The ‘hood was rough, my mother single-handedly took down a crime operation in the ‘80s,” he said. “But there was enough good in the neighborhood that we still cared.”
That care for the neighborhood can be traced far back in the Miller family. Wendi’s grandfather, William Henry Miller Sr. owned an autobody shop on Kirkwood Street in East Liberty in the 1920s. During the Great Depression, he would pay the out-of-work to do odd jobs to help them stay afloat. His two sons took over the body shop in the late 1940s, and Wendi’s father, Bill Jr., would go on to provide vocational training for troubled youth under the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Wendi owes her existence to East Liberty’s Motor Square Garden where, Bill Jr. took his girlfriend Marion Cleary to a roller derby match to propose on June 5th, 1944. A day later the allied powers stormed the beaches at Normandy and he would enlist to fight in the 10th Armored Division, which would be recognized by the U.S. Holocaust Museum as a liberating unit at a Dachau concentration camp on April 27, 1945.
“Miller Frame was run for about 20 years by only trans women, continuing the Miller legacy of employing the disenfranchised and fighting for human rights.” Cooper noted.
Making meaning through service
Activism and community engagement was integral to Wendi’s life. She served on ELDI’s community planning committee for many years and worked with the East Liberty Chamber of Commerce. She was also active in forming East Liberty’s Neighborhood Improvement District, which helped finance improvements to the commercial core, from graffiti cleaning to extra police protection.
In 1995, Wendi successfully lobbied for changes to legislation before the Pittsburgh Human Rights Commission, extending protections against discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations to transgender and gender-variant individuals.
Right after Wendi died, Cooper witnessed the effects of Wendi’s work first-hand. On a visit to PNC Bank to settle Wendi’s accounts, the banker happened to be a trans woman. She had fled Florida due to anti-transgender policies and moved to Pittsburgh because it felt like a safer place to transition.
“You don’t know how close you are to the place that made this possible for you,” Cooper replied.
The Wendi Miller Legacy Project
That was when Cooper knew he had to preserve and share Wendi’s legacy. Today, he’s dedicated to archiving and raising awareness of Wendi’s work through the Wendi Miller Legacy Project, a project that’s taken on greater urgency given the precarious state of trans rights in the world today.
Alongside creating a digital archive of her art and cultural objects, the project is raising money for a monument to be built at Allegheny Cemetery. Cooper recently received a Ten:tacles Initiative grant to support the project. Last year, he also hosted Wendi Miller Night in partnership with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust at the Harris Theater where he displayed some of Wendi’s art and films. The exhibit was part of the MS 89 series in partnership with Casey Droege Cultural Productions.
He sees it as a way of making meaning from his grief. You could call it a re-framing of sorts, for him, and East Liberty.
“Wendi changed not only the economic growth of East Liberty, but the cultural growth of the entire East End,” Cooper reflected. “How do I take this little slice of history and manifest it in a way that is going to outlive Wendi, to outlive me? I think culture is the way people find purpose, and to revisit Wendi’s legacy re-infuses the neighborhood with a kind of purpose and history rooted in change.”
