“Sometimes Marcus – and he would do this all the time – would just stop and look around and smile,” said Rissel Sanderson. “That’s something that we don’t do because we are so busy in life. Pause the moment where you feel like you are truly happy. Pause. Take a few seconds. Enjoy that precious moment in his name.”
Sanderson delivered these words as she spoke about her longtime partner Marcus Miles, who died suddenly on Sept. 30, on Saturday, Oct. 28 at “Marcus Miles: A Celebration of Life.” The Madison community came out in force to fondly remember the life and legacy of Marcus Miles, one of its great community photographers. Literally, thousands and thousands of photos were on display – both of Miles and photos that he took – in various areas in different types of collages of the third floor of the Madison Public Library. Speakers took turns talking and reminiscing about the impact Miles had on their lives.
“I’ve been struggling. This has been so hard but I’ve had the support of my friends and the support of my parents. Every day, I think about the happy moments,” Sanderson told the crowd.
The last couple of years, Sanderson said, Miles was suffering from back pain. “But I would always tell him, ‘I’ve got your back, baby!” she remembered, laughing. “Literally.
“I really looked up to him. He was such a caring person,” she added.
Shiva Bidar told the crowd that she was speaking on behalf of Marcus’s close friends who put together this celebration “because we knew that Marcus would want us to celebrate his life.”
“He was always full of life with that smile. He was full of texts – out of nowhere – to tell each of us:’Hey, what’s up today? Hope you had a great day.’ We want to remember that every day as we go forward,” Bidar said.
“We want to tell you, Marcus, that you will always be in our hearts. Every day. Every time that we get together we will remember you because you will be present with us in the room,” Bidar added. “He was a very kind soul. I can tell you that in my life, I’ve crossed paths with many people, but Marcus was really unique. He was unique because he was always surrounded with people from different walks of life. He knew everybody! He embraced every single one of us for who we were.”
His children were so very important to him, Bidar said.
“Ethan, Camille, and Allison were the center of his life,” Bidar says, “and Rissel was his true love.”
At the event, Kaleem Caire announced that they were starting up a trust fund for Miles’s three children.
“If you knew Marcus at all, you knew that he was always talking about his children. Every time I saw him, he would be asking about mine,” Caire said.
Caire said he really got to know Miles well at the Urban League of Greater Madison where he took pictures for ULGM and he also took pictures for Caire’s One City Early Learning Center.
“All the photographs that you see that look really nice that are on our Facebook page or on our website, those are all photographs that Marcus took,” Caire said. “Every time we had a photo shoot, I could say, ‘Brother, I have an idea, but I want to do it tomorrow,’ and he would tell me, ‘Alright, Kaleem, I’ll figure out a time to be there’ and he would make himself available all the time to do it.
Caire said that Miles was “our Gordon Parks” referring to the famous black photographer and film director who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism for decades from the 1940s through 1970s — particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African-Americans.
“Marcus was that for us here in Madison. He documented a lot of activities that we were all involved in,” Caire says. “We will miss him for that. I will miss his friendship. I’m so glad that you all are here today.”
Miles’s old, dear friend Charles Taylor came all the way from California to speak at the event.
“We go back decades. Marcus, like Kaleem and others have said, seemed to know everybody. Anywhere we went, Marcus was the guy. He would talk you up a storm. He was friendly with everybody,” Taylor said. “Everybody loved him. It’s really strange to be up here speaking to y’all, because I was literally just here a few months ago and Marcus and I just went out to a pool party and we hung out and had fun. It’s surreal here being here and talking about Marcus, but it’s wonderful to see how many lives he has touched and how many people came out to see him.
“I can’t say enough good things about Marcus. I’m going to miss him tremendously. He helped me through hard times and good times,” Taylor added. “I hoped I helped him, as well. I appreciate all of you people coming out for him. I wasn’t going to miss this for the world.”
Sanderson expressed appreciate to Hedi Rudd for all of her help getting the thousands of photos together for the event.
“All of the beautiful, kind words that you are expressing today about him…. that makes me so happy,” Sanderson says. “And I know that he’s here and he’s smiling and he’s proud to be a part of so many of our lives.
“I want to thank all of my friends and my parents who helped put this together. This is what he wanted. He wanted to have everybody here together,” she added. “A special thanks to Hedi [Rudd] who put these photographs together for us. The best memories are the ones that are in our minds; and that’s what is going to keep Marcus alive in our hearts forever. The good moments we spent with him.”
