William P. Miller, who rediscovered love of rowing, dies at age 91

All William "Press" Prescott Miller wanted to do was get back on the water. A former member of the Yale University crew team, he competed against the Huskies at the 1936 Olympic trials.

Last year, at 90, he persuaded younger members of the Classic Ancient Mariners, a rowing club, to let him practice with them.

The sight of a 90-year-old man rowing several 500-meter lengths in an eight-oar boat in Portage Bay was "stunning," said group member Roger Seeman, and it earned Mr. Miller a round of applause back on the dock.

"He never lost that image of himself as an athlete, even in his 90s," Seeman said.

Eight months later, Jan. 18, Mr. Miller died of leukemia at his home in Seattle. He was 91.

Mr. Miller began to row in college. Near the end of his life, he joined a subset of the Classic Ancient Mariners, the Really Ancient Mariners, which meets at George Pocock Memorial Rowing Center in Seattle.

It sparked something in him: "He wanted to feel that sense of excellence again," Seeman said.

Born in 1915 in Montclair, N.J., Mr. Miller attended the Cathedral Choir School of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, The Loomis Institute (now the Loomis Chaffee School) in Windsor, Conn., and graduated from Yale University in 1939.

He first worked as a sales and industrial engineer for American Locomotive, and he met Elizabeth, his wife of 62 years, during a stay in Minneapolis, said his daughter Wendy Patry, of Rio Verde, Ariz. During World War II he served in China as a Navy officer, and worked for the War Production Board in Washington, D.C.

In 1966 the couple moved to Seattle, where Mr. Miller joined Boeing as a product-development manager for the SST (supersonic transport). He retired in 1981, but Patry said she hardly remembers a day when her father was not in a shirt and tie.

He held happy hour for his neighbors, and days before his death he was planning a poetry presentation for a group of senior church members at University Presbyterian Church, where he was a longtime member of the choir.

"He kept all that zest," Patry said, "relishing rowing, relishing living."

Besides daughter Wendy, Mr. Miller is survived by his son, Prescott L. Miller, of Mountain View, Calif.; daughters, Phoebe Sarno of Dana Point, Calif., and Stephanie Corgatelli of Seattle; two grandsons, one great-grandson, three nephews and four nieces.

A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 29, at University Presbyterian Church. Donations in memory of Mr. Miller may be made to University Presbyterian Church or Union Gospel Mission.

Amy Roe: 206-464-3347 or aroe@seattletimes.com