Charlotte H. Miller Navajo Collection

Charlotte Huggins was born in Columbus, Ohio on June 30, 1904. She attended school in Grandview Heights, a suburb of Columbus, graduating from North High School in 1922. She attended the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music as a piano major and transferred to Ohio State University in 1923. In 1933 Huggins moved with her mother and brother to Southern California. After attending the Southwest Secretarial and Business College in Los Angeles she took a position as Secretary and Office Manager at the School of Government at the University of Southern California. An appointment to the Director of the Institute of Government led to a Civil Service appointment as Administrative Assistant to the Director of the City of Los Angeles Major Disaster Council.

At the outbreak of World War II, Huggins was appointed Acting Director of the Major Disaster Emergency Council. She transferred to Sacramento, California in June of 1942 to be Administrative Assistant to the Director of the State of California War Council. She held this position until May 1944 when she joined the American Red Cross as Field Representative to Chapters in Northern and Central California.

Responsible for 22 Chapters and 14 Branches, her duties included program development, budget and financial development, training workshops for disaster preparedness, and operational plans for Chapter staff and volunteers. She was also dispatched to scenes of national disasters to work as an Emergency Family Service Coordinator. Two of her disaster assignments, from which this collection grew, were to the Navajo Nation drought and blizzard emergency of 1948 and 1949-50.

In 1955, Huggins married Ernest Miller. She held the position of Executive Assistant to the Palo Alto Chapter Director from 1962 until she retired in 1973. She continued to volunteer for the American Red Cross after her retirement, totaling 54 years of paid and volunteer service. She died in California on March 29, 2002.