Virginia Tyler

Virginia Lillian Tyler (born January 24, 1908 - died January 19, 2002) was a long-time director of the Ensley Community House.

Tyler was one of seven children born to Joe T. Tyler and Florence Foulks Tyler in Bluff Park. She grew up there, active at Bluff Park United Methodist Church. She graduated from Shades Cahaba High School in 1926, and then enrolled at Birmingham-Southern College. After completing her bachelor's degree in English in 1930 she went on to do graduate work at Scarritt College in Nashville, Tennessee and Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In 1933, Tyler took a job at the Ensley Community House which was run by Dorothy Grim for the Birmingham Board of City Missions, organized by First Methodist Church. She became director of activities for the house after Grim's retirement in 1941. During Tyler's tenure, a new community house building was constructed in 1942. At some point later, Tyler's programs were moved to the Ensley YMCA. The Board dropped the program in 1969. Tyler remained active in community programs until she retired in 1973. In retirement she pursued her interests in travel, sketching, and quilting.

Commissioned a deaconness in the United Methodist Church since 1941, Tyler was eligible to become a resident of the Brooks-Howell Home in Ashville, North Carolina, where she spent the last years of her life, from 1986 until her death in 2002. She was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Birmingham.

References

• Hubbs, G. Ward (Winter 2005) "A Settlement House in Ensley's Italian District." Alabama Heritage.
• Brooks-Howell Home. In Memory 2002 - Virginia Lillian Tyler - accessed February 14, 2007