(Editor's note: Feb. 1 through Feb. 29 is Black History Month. Throughout the month we'll introduce you to a person who made a difference in a way that you might not know about.)
Occupation & age: Pastor of Stewart Tabernacle AME Zion Church in Fresno and former pastor of Howard Chapel AME Zion Church in Hanford, 73.
Family: She has three children, Patricia Bolden, Virgil Rena Miles and Tyrone Miles. Virgil Lee, her husband, died in 2003. She has six grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Why you should know her: Rev. Elvira Miles is a Hanford pioneer. In the 1980s, she became the pastor of Howard Chapel AME Zion Church, making her the first woman to lead a prominent church in this area.
Miles has never been one to shy away from challenges.
"She just goes out and does things -- even at her age," said Wanda Baker, a friend and former teacher at Gardenside School.
She has distinguished herself as a student and educator. She graduated from California State University, Fresno, in 1975 with a theology degree. In her early 40s, she was nearly a generation older than her fellow graduates.
"If you are determined to make it, you can go to school and finish. You just have to have a made-up mind," she said.
Miles worked as a teacher's aide at Gardenside School for 22 years, retiring in 1990. Her former colleagues say that her commitment to kids went far beyond the academic input of the classroom.
That's just a part of Miles' impact in the often impoverished neighborhoods of south Hanford, where she still lives.
Since arriving in Hanford in 1960 from Arkansas, she has been active in the black community, providing material and spiritual help wherever needed.
She was active in several civil rights marches that took place in Hanford during the upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s.
Her evangelism work involved not only preaching the Christian message, but providing clothes, bathing sick people in bed, taking food to shut-ins.
As pastor of Howard Chapel, she worked hard to provide a spiritual compass to a mostly black congregation that remained open to all comers.
The calling to serve has not faded with age. Miles is still pastoring, this time at Stewart Tabernacle AME Zion Church in Fresno, where she's been since 2001.
Miles may not be there in five years, but it's a safe bet that she will be out there, continuing to minister to people with quiet strength and dignity.
"I'll be doing that until Christ calls me home," she said.
What are some of her achievements?: She became the first female pastor in Hanford history when she led Howard Chapel AME Zion Church in the 1980s.
Organizations in which she was involved: Howard Chapel AME Zion Church, Hand-in-Hand Family Resource Center, Stewart Tabernacle AME Zion Church (Fresno), campaign staff of Jim Costa and Nicole Parra.
(Feb. 1, 2008)