'Everyone loved Stacey': Fort Liberty-raised advocate to be featured on U.S. quarter
Twenty years after meeting her, Stacey Park Milbern's high school teachers' eyes shine with pride when they talk about her.
Milbern, who grew up on Fort Liberty and was a Massey Hill Classical High School graduate, will join the ranks of 19 other American women in 2025 when the U.S. Mint features her on a commemorative quarter.
Brian O'Neal, Milbern's sophomore-year English teacher at Massey Hill Classical High School, said recently that Milbern, who died on her 33rd birthday in 2020, was everything he hopes his students will become in life.
“Everyone loved Stacey,” O’Neal said. “She had a real can-do attitude and she was involved, passionate about her interests and passionate about her education and her future plans. I just view her as an inspiration to all the students, just a model student in every way that you can imagine.”
Milbern's legacy as a disability rights advocate will live on in part through the American Women Quarters Program, which began in 2022 as a way to celebrate American women’s accomplishments, according to the U.S. Mint. The program honors up to five notable women each year with their own quarter designs, with Milbern’s class of honorees including journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, tennis player Althea Gibson and astronomer Dr. Vera Rubin.
The final design for Milbern’s coin has yet to be selected, but six potential designs were featured in a news release on Oct. 24.
Positive in the face of adversity
O'Neal and Gregory Nazario, the chair of the Social Studies department, said that the designs look just like the Stacey they knew.
“She made such an impression on me that I didn’t have to look her up when I heard about all this,” O’Neal said. “I remembered Stacey from all those years ago.”
Nazario was Milbern's American history teacher and sponsored the Anime Club to which she belonged. She was deeply proud of her Korean heritage, Nazario said, grinning as he recalled how a 16-year-old Milbern introduced him to the Korean pop music that he now enjoys with his daughters.
“She hands me a CD and she goes, ‘Mr. Nazario, I am gonna help you love K-pop like I love K-pop,’” Nazario recounted. “It was so sweet and I just remember how eager she was to share.”
Born with muscular dystrophy, Milbern faced many health challenges in high school, but never let that stop her, her teachers said.
“I can’t imagine anyone being dealt a more challenging set of cards to begin their journey on this planet. Her positive energy and attitude was like an aura, and it was infectious,” Nazario said. “She wouldn’t be receiving such an unbelievable honor if what we were saying wasn’t true.”
Building a legacy
After graduating from Massey Hill Classical High School in 2005, Milbern graduated from Methodist University in 2009, later moving to the Bay Area in California in 2011 to live independently and further her work, the New York Times reported. She earned a Master of Business Administration from Mills College in California in 2016. Milbern was recognized with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 35th birthday on May 19, 2022.
“After noticing a lack of advocacy for disabled LGBTQ+ and people of color, she teamed up with other activists in 2005 to coin disability justice — a framework dedicated to ensuring the perspectives of traditionally marginalized groups within the disabled community weren’t left out of the fight for disability rights,” the caption for Milbern’s Google Doodle said.
During her time in North Carolina, Milbern was appointed by Gov. Michael Easley to serve on the state’s Independent Living Council and Commission for the Blind, according to an Oct. 17 U.S. Mint news release.
“She was instrumental in the writing and passage of the North Carolina law requiring that a disability curriculum be taught in schools,” the release said. “Her visionary speeches and online writings inspired empowerment, inclusiveness, and interdependence. She directly supported people with disabilities transitioning from institutional care to living independently.”
In 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Milbern to the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, the release said. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Milbern called attention to obstacles that disabled people might face as a result of the pandemic and created a mutual aid network to help disabled people impacted by shelter-in-place orders, according to the release.
Milbern’s dedication and advocacy embodied the spirit of Massey Hill Classical High School, O’Neal said.
“She truly exemplified everything that we always hope our students will go out and do, that they’ll make a difference, they’ll follow their dream, they’ll follow their passions,” he said.
'The world is better today because of Stacey'
Nazario said he didn’t learn of Milbern’s accomplishments until seeing her Google Doodle.
“The next day in class, I was just bragging to everybody,” he said. “I said, ‘Guys, this is huge. This is reserved for movers and shakers.’”
Similarly, O’Neal and Nazario didn’t learn of Milbern’s inclusion in the American Women Quarters Program until the school’s principal, Douglas Massengill, shared the news with them.
The school hopes to honor Milbern’s recognition when the quarter is released in 2025, Nazario said.
“There’s going to be a proper ceremony here, and rightly so,” he said. “If anyone had the right to give up and be ‘woe is me’ and sink into a depressive state and not contribute in any way, it was her… Her body betrayed her in the most cruel way, but her mind and her spirit was as sharp as it possibly could be.”
The quarter is just one part of Milbern’s undeniable impact, O’Neal said.
“The lives that she’s touched in a positive way and the changes that she helped to bring about to make so many people’s lives better will be her lasting legacy,” he said. “The world is better today because of Stacey and her advocacy and the hard work that she did on behalf of others.”
Got a tip for a follow-up? Government watchdog reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at ABSolomon@gannett.com or 910-481-8526.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Stacey Park Milbern of Fort Liberty to be featured on U.S. quarter
