ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Marta Miltiades endows scholarship in memory of her brother, Bill Miltiades, BC Class of 1985

Marta Miltiades, St. Vincent’s Academy Class of 1988, has established the William “Bill” Arthur Miltiades, Jr. ’85 Endowed Scholarship at Benedictine Military School to help young men attend BC.

Marta’s generosity in memory of Bill will change the lives of many Cadets. She chose to endow a scholarship “because he loved Benedictine and he had such a camaraderie with all his friends from BC. He absolutely loved every single one of them. And he kept in touch with all of them. He’d go out of town with them. It’s a lifelong bond. When you’re at BC and St. Vincent’s, you make lifelong friends and connections, and when you get out in life, you always fall back (on those friendships).”

Powerful proof of that bond jolted Marta on Aug. 31, 2023, a Thursday which she calls “the worst day of my life.” She received word that her big brother, Bill, died after climbing and summiting Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. Bill had recently celebrated his 56^th birthday, enjoying a few weeks on Tybee Island with family and friends.

“He died of high-altitude sickness,” Marta said. “He climbed to the top of the mountain. He was up there for a while. Everybody that was up there was getting sick – they were getting sick on the way up. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. They summitted the top. They were up there for quite a while and on the way down a lot of people were getting sick so he let the girls go, and other men go, before him. You can’t all go down at one time so they would go down in pairs with a porter. He let everybody go first. He was the last one to go down the mountain with his guide.

“And about an hour-and-a-half into the decent, he told one of the guys that he needed to stop and rest for a second because his legs were tired,” she continued. “When they told me that, and the way it was explained to me, I knew immediately that something was wrong because he hiked all of the time. As soon as they told me that he said his legs were tired, I knew that there was something really bad because he was never tired. He was always go-go-go. Always. Go-go-go, here-here-here. He’d get up early, he’d go workout, he’d go to work, he’d go workout again, he’d come home … but he was about an hour-and-a-half into the decent and he died just from the high altitude, just from lack of oxygen from the high altitude. He died just below Stella Pointe, which is a crater rim.”

Marta began calling all of Bill’s “major best friends” to tell them the tragic news.

“When he died in Africa, one of his best friends, a fellow BC classmate who lives in Florida, offered to fly to Africa and stay with Billy’s body until it came home.”

Marta’s voice cracks. Tears stream from her eyes as she vividly recalls that moment.

“I said, ‘Nope. Don’t do it. I don’t need you to do that. Billy wouldn’t have wanted that. Billy would want you to stay with your wife and kids. I have two people that are over there right now, the two girls he was with, and everything is taken care of,’” Marta said. “My first cousin, who lives in north Georgia, goes to Africa to build churches, so he had some of the people who are leaders of the churches that they built continually checking on (Bill) and praying for him while he was there. But I thought that was awesome that his forever BC buddy even said he was doing it. I still have people that (Bill) went to BC with who call me and say, ‘Hey, I just want to see how you’re doing.’ I just love them.”

Marta, who has lost her father (William A. Miltiades Sr.), mother (Lynn Kelly Corbly Miltiades), and brother, paused before saying, “I have not lost my BC family.”

By establishing an endowed scholarship in Bill’s memory, Marta finds peace in knowing that his memory will live on.

“It’s perpetual,” she said. “As long as BC is around, his name will be said.”

Marta and her daughter, Starlyn (St. Vincent’s Academy Class of 2018), plan to endow a scholarship in Bill’s memory at SVA, too. “I want to get (the endowed scholarship at) BC moving and then I’ll do St. Vincent’s after that.”

Bill “did everything big,” Marta said. And the stories that she shares about their time together, especially their BC & SVA stories, are legendary.

“I was a big tomboy when I was in high school, and I didn’t realize everything (about life), and he and all his friends were very protective of me,” she said. “And they were all mostly BC boys.”

Bill attended St. James Catholic School before coming to Benedictine.

“When he was a St. James, he was very quiet and shy,” Marta said, laughing. “When he got to high school, he did a lot more. Our house was always the party house, which was crazy. After every BC (football) game you would see the cars and the kids literally funneling from Memorial Stadium to our house in Mayfair. I’m sure every single BC boy will always remember that.

“He didn’t play football, but he helped to build the casket every year (for homecoming). He had a great time. We made that coffin at our house every year. We did the bonfire (at BC). We did everything. We just completely dumped ourselves into everything. (Our family) owned a men’s clothing store when we were growing up so most of the BC boys and their dads went to our store, which was The Stagg Shoppe. We just had a great time. He would lead the bonfire, and the boys would throw that casket in there. It was neat.”

At BC, Bill participated in JROTC during his freshman and sophomore years. He played soccer as a junior and senior. He was on the rifle team as a freshman, was in the oceanography club as a sophomore and junior, and a member of BC’s “Coffin Crew” (for homecoming festivities) as a senior.

After BC, Bill earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia, where he played rugby. Upon graduation, Bill went to work for Millikin and ran many of their companies for five years. Millikin sent him to the Institute of Textile Technology in Charlottesville, Va., where he completed all the requirements for his master’s degree.
 

“After college, he worked for Millikin, the textile company,” Marta said. “He started in north Georgia, the Gainesville area, but he went to all different places, including South Carolina. He did that for exactly five years and then he came home. When he came home, he bought his first house and flipped it. It was in the neighborhood across from our neighborhood. And after that, he bought a lot of houses, and he taught a lot of his friends how to purchase houses. He helped them get to where they could do it, too, and many of them are successful because of him.”

Bill bought and flipped houses as he became a realtor. He worked as a realtor with Prudential Southeast Coastal Properties and then as an associate broker with ReMax Savannah. He started Bill Miltiades Management, LLC in 2011 and became a broker of his own company, Bill Miltiades Realty, in 2018.

“He went to work for Southeast Prudential Realty,” Marta said. “He started doing the house flipping and he got his real estate license, and he went to work for the exact same company that my dad worked for and had the exact same office. He did that for a very short time, and then he went to a bigger company and stayed with that company for 19 years.”

Bill was an adrenaline junkie.

“He had a great time,” Marta said. “He’d be skiing one month, and he’d be in Paris the next month. And he’d be in Costa Rica the next month. He loved traveling. He loved his life. And he loved helping people. He helped so many people. He had a heart bigger than anybody I know.”

Marta said she often feels Bill’s presence.

“I took a cruise (with family and friends) and we went to Europe last year, and when we went to go to the Basilica in Rome, we’re in Italy and the girl that worked there that was doing our tour was a St. Vincent’s graduate,” she said. “I’m like ‘that is insane!’ You have St. Vincent’s graduates coming to go tour the Vatican and our tour guide was a St. Vincent’s graduate. She lives there now and I’m sure she will help many more BC and SVA students that are there.

“There are people all over the world that you just always connect with,” she continued. “It just shows that BC and St. Vincent’s, they are the same way. Because I have met people overseas, in the middle of nowhere, and they’ve got a BC ring on. I even went up to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration this last time and I’m walking down the road, and I recognize this guy, and he’s wearing a BC shirt. I said, ‘Hey, I know you, you’re one of my bankers.’ And he said, ‘Hey, Marta! How are you?’ I met his whole family and he met mine, and we just hung out. He knew my brother. It’s a small world. It’s pretty cool.”

What are the odds that Marta would have these types of encounters with BC and SVA alumni so far away from Savannah?

“Everything happens for a reason,” she said. “I know that. God has a plan for everything and I know that.”