A Crabtown native, Bill was born in Annapolis, the son of Captain and Mrs. Raleigh B. Miller, USNA’20.  Before joining the Brigade, he attended the University of the South in Sewanee, TN.  A naval aviator who was always at the top of his flight training class, Bill served as a flight instructor in the Naval Air Advanced Training Command and later flew the F-3B and F-4B fighter aircraft in carrier based operations.  After graduating from U.S. Navy Test Pilot School, he was a test pilot at the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, MD for four years. While assigned to the Flight Test Center, he received a Navy citation and the Air Medal for evaluation of the F-111B.

Bill left the Navy in 1967 and joined the Grumman Corporation as an engineering test pilot. He was considered Grumman’s top test pilot.  Both Bill and another test pilot survived an F-14 crash in 1970, but Bill subsequently perished in a second F-14 accident during the summer of 1972.

Throughout the years after graduation, Bill and classmate and fellow aviator Danny Michaels were best friends.  Bill’s wife Charm is now married to Sam Sims and lives in Rock Island, TN.  Other immediate family members include three sons, Bryan, Stephen, and Kenneth and his brother, Raleigh, JR, USNA ’54.