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The play The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller '04, LL.D. '55, and her teacher Annie Sullivan, includes a climactic scene at a water pump. An infantile illness had left Keller blind and deaf, but Sullivan managed to communicate the concept "water" by tapping the word into Keller's palm using a manual alphabet while pumping water over her other hand.

A century later, that aqueous moment may have influenced the life of Carrie Miller '96, a varsity swimmer for four years and a top performer for the women's swim team. Miller has become famous in the water as a butterfly artist; last year, for example, she won both the 100- and 200-meter butterflys at the Easterns and nearly qualified for the NCAA meet. She was an All-East swimmer in her junior and senior years, and at the senior letter winners' dinner before Commencement, she was corecipient of the Harvard-Radcliffe Foundation for Women's Athletics Prize, presented annually to a senior woman who "best exemplifies the qualities of excellence in scholarship, character, leadership, and athletic ability."

Miller has been deaf since she was 15 months old, when spinal meningitis took her hearing. At age 7 she began swimming. Her father, economist Jeff Miller, swam on the Amherst team and captained the lacrosse squad. His daughter became fast enough to swim freestyle and individual medley in the junior nationals before switching to butterfly. "I always loved playing in water-I loved the feel of it," she says. "And the 'fly is the smoothest stroke there is." The summer after her freshman year in high school, Miller won nine gold medals at the world games for the deaf in Sofia, Bulgaria.

As a senior at Severna Park Senior High in Maryland, Miller had four criteria for colleges: (1) a solid academic reputation, (2) good disability services, (3) a nearby deaf community, and (4) a strong swim team. After completing seven college applications, she didn't feel like doing another one. "But Mom said, 'Why don't you apply to Harvard? Helen Keller was a student there and they have a good track record for disability services,'" Miller recalls. That February, when she visited Cambridge as a swimming recruit, Miller "fell in love" with Harvard, she says.

Since that time, the women swimmers and many others in the Harvard community have returned the favor: Miller has been a much-beloved friend and teammate. "It was hard socially because it's hard to lip-read everyone," she says, estimating that at best, lip-reading can decipher 60 percent of what someone is saying. "I've had a few friends who have been willing to learn sign language, and we've become very close," Miller says. Several swimming teammates took sign language courses to help them interact with Miller.

She has had five people as roommates, all of whom have learned to sign. In her senior year she shared a four-woman suite in Adams House, an arrangement with some unique benefits for her roommates. "Loud music and noise doesn't bother me," Miller grins. "My roommates can play what they want." By the same token, she notes, "If a roommate is complaining to someone else, I don't have to listen to it."

While there have been a few other deaf students at Harvard since Helen Keller, Miller was the first to request and receive a full-time sign language interpreter for all four years. At lectures, Miller's interpreter would translate speech into sign language. Harvard also helped find students to take notes for her, and installed a special visual fire alarm system that uses flashing lights in her room. (Miller's telephone also "rings" with a flashing light.)

"Harvard considers me bilingual," she says, adding that when she sees a lecture in sign language,"I take it in in a different mode. Sign language is more visual than English and I have to fit the two languages together."

Interpreters have also accompanied Miller to swim meets, training trips, and field trips for biology classes; she graduated magna cum laude in environmental science and public policy. Last year, Radcliffe College helped fund Miller's participation in the world swimming championships for the deaf in Belgium, where she set a world record for a deaf swimmer with a time of 1:05.41 in the 100-meter butterfly.

Women's swimming coach Maura Costin Scalise "was the first coach to give me any attention," Miller says. "Growing up, coaches ignored me. Usually, they would never talk to me about strategy or how to approach a race. Maura has been really good to me; she helped me a lot with my confidence about swimming. She learned numbers in sign language so she was able to give me the sets for workouts." Scalise says that "Carrie was an inspiration for us all. Often we forgot that she was deaf, because her deafness did not hold her back from reaching any of her goals."

Soundless swimming has its advantages. Races start with an audible beep synchronized to a strobe light; Miller, of course, starts on the light. "Since light travels faster than sound, I'm in the water first," she beams. "Everyone knows me as the fastest starter in the league." Another thing: "In practices teammates sometimes develop a bad attitude; they get tired and grouchy. I don't pick up on that because I don't overhear," Miller says. "I don't tend to be influenced by the goings-on in the locker room." When lifting weights or working out, Miller "can be very focused. I'm not tempted to chat with other people. As a result," she adds, eyes twinkling, "my teammates think I'm so serious!"

In actuality, Miller is energetic, charming, and lighthearted. "She's a lot of fun and has a wonderful sense of humor," says Scalise. Miller's academic work does sound rather serious: her senior thesis concerned the recycling of nitrogen in a column of water in Chesapeake Bay-a homey site, since her family now lives in Baltimore. Next year a Fulbright grant will take her to Australia, where Miller will work at a governmental marine science lab in Brisbane. She also plans to volunteer at schools for the deaf in that area. Yes, she will swim-but "for fun," she says. "I'm finished competing."

Moving to the other side of the world somehow feels like the inevitable next stage for the adventurous Miller, who has found ways to let her deafness enrich her own life-and through her, the lives of others. "I tend to see things differently," she says. "I have the deaf world and the hearing world-I think it makes my life more exciting to have both of those communities."

Craig Lambert

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