Meta Fuller Waller – Government Employee & Military Widow

by

remembering-the-lost

mlwaller-pentagon

Meta Waller
Attack Location: Pentagon
Age: 60
Home: Alexandria, Virginia

When 60-year-old Meta Waller returned from the World Conference on Racism, she told her family it had changed her life.

Waller attended the conference with a group of schoolchildren, taking time off from her work at the Pentagon, where she was special programs manager for the administrative assistant to the secretary of the Army. She had worked there 12 years and was at her desk when the hijacked airliner slammed into the building.

Long interested in the civil rights movement, Waller looked for inspiration to her two famous grandparents, Meta Warrick Fuller, an African American sculptor, and Solomon Carter Fuller, the first African American psychiatrist in the United States.

Waller collected her grandmother’s sculptures and tried her own hand at art. She was also a poet; her niece, Chrislan F. Manuel, said the family is trying to collect her poems.

Carol Fuller, Waller’s sister-in-law, said she was a gifted storyteller. Family trips to Martha’s Vineyard prompted Waller to create a series of science fiction stories about fellow ferry passengers from other planets who traveled to the Vineyard disguised as day-trippers.

“There, that one could be from Pluto,” she would say.

Waller was a world traveler. Her niece and sister-in-law loved taking all-girl vacations with her, including a cherished one recently to the British Virgin Islands.

Waller grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, and received her undergraduate degree from Wayne State University and her   master’s degree in government from Harvard.

Relatives said they are gaining strength by remembering Waller’s resolve in the face of sorrow, including the death of her husband and daughter.

“This is a woman who has had a lot of tragedy in her life. But she went on. She continued to work — and she was successful,” Fuller said.

— Rosalind S. Helderman

WALLER, META FULLER

Of Alexandria, VA, missing as of 11 September 2001, as a result of the attack on the Pentagon. Devoted daughter of Harriet Ellis Fuller and the late William Thomas Fuller. Beloved mother of the late Cheryl Lynne Coates; sister of the late William Thomas Fuller, Jr. and the late Solomon Carter Fuller, III. She is also survived by nieces, nephews, many loving cousins and friends. Memorial services to be held on Friday, October 12, 2001 at Memorial Chapel, Building 480, 101 McNair Rd., Fort Myer, VA at 11 a.m. (Please meet at the Administration Building at Arlington National Cemetery at 10:30 a.m.) In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Meta Fuller Waller Memorial Fund, Industrial Bank, 2000 11th St., NW, Washington, DC 20001-4097, attn: Mrs. Ward, Acct. #1056972. This is a fund to benefit the Chris Hani Community School, Cape Town, South Africa.

Read our general and most popular articles

Leave a Comment