Special thanks to Dorothy Miles’ estate for their collaboration on this project. Below Liz Deverill, niece of Dorothy, shares her thoughts on today’s Doodle and Dorothy Miles’ legacy.
Dorothy’s siblings have now passed, so it is her nephews and nieces who have memories of her, that we hold dear. Her sister Gwenda (Wendy) wrote about her birth on 19th August 1931, North Wales, “I remember the day Dorothy was born and I knew exactly how she got there! The Irwin’s van brought her along with the groceries….” Her early childhood home was a happy one which engendered her love for music, poetry and drama. She described it as a totally fascinating world of make-up and madness, to which I lost my heart to forever”. Dorothy had many challenges in her life, not least becoming deaf at 8, following a bout of meningococcal meningitis. For her, this meant separation from her family; her parents and her brother and three sisters, to whom she was very close.
As young children my family saw her fleetingly, on her visits to the UK from the States and learned later of her gradual decline into serious mental illness. However, her achievements as a pioneer of BSL deaf poetry with several published books of poetry and the BBC publication “The beginner’s guide to British Sign Language” meant she had become very well known and successful in her field. Her time with The American National Theatre of the Deaf elevated her reputation as a performer of plays and poetry. Our lasting memory of her is as a much-loved Aunt who was “larger than life” and of whom we are immensely proud.
