Mildred Andrews Cunningham of Knoxville passed away peacefully on April 12, 2014. Born in Bath County, Virginia, to the late Ann Crawford Andrews and Gordon Eugene Andrews, Milli graduated as the Valedictorian of Covington High School, Covington, VA.  She attended Erskine College in Due West, SC, earning her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. She then taught 6th grade in Occoquan, VA, for a year before going to Aleppo, Syria, to marry Bob Cunningham and teach in the Presbyterian Girls High school there. While accompanying Bob through graduate school in Washington, DC, and Bloomington, Indiana, she gave birth to daughters Nina and Ann.  The family spent a year in Jordan and 5 years in Canada before settling in Knoxville in 1972.   In 1973 Milli entered UT College of Law during a time when becoming an attorney was an emergent career choice for women. After graduating in 1976, she joined the UT Legal Clinic and helped establish its Family Law Unit. She was the first director of the pro bono component of what was then the Knoxville Legal Aid Society. Milli also fought to increase legal protection for women involved in domestic violence and vigilantly lobbied state legislators to pass a domestic violence law that would protect those caught in untenable situations.  After 5 years with Legal Aid, Milli chose to enter private practice to focus on family law cases. She developed a reputation as a compassionate attorney who worked hard to resolve difficult cases by collaborating with opposing attorneys to develop reasonable solutions that addressed the needs of their clients and their children. Milli’s commitment to the practice of mediation before litigation was a hallmark of her work until her retirement. She was a member of the Knoxville Bar Association Committee on Mediation that set up the framework for training mediators and led the training of the first two classes of mediators. This initiative became the model for the current Community Mediation Center.