Burke learned of "The Singing Experience," a workshop in Manhattan under the direction of Linda Amiel Burns, who teaches people with a song in their hearts to "throw off their fears and self-imposed perfection barriers" and let it all come out.

"There are no wrong notes at The Singing Experience," said Burns, who shepherds her class through four rehearsal sessions that culminate in a live singing appearance onstage at a New York nightclub. "We are noncompetitive, supportive and nurturing." Over the past 25 years, Burns has shown the way for thousands of participants to blossom from being "mice to Ethel Merman," as she likes to put it.

And so it was that, on a chill and blustery night when New York City was buffeted by the gale winds and heavy rains of a Nor'easter, the families and friends of 17 would-be Mermans crowded into The Triad, a pocket-size cabaret on West 72nd Street. They cheered on such would-be singing stars as a proper-looking, tuxedo-clad oral surgeon from Philadelphia who sang a heartfelt "I've Got You Under My Skin" to his wife, and a brassy bombshell of a commercial film director who offered an earthy rendition of "Nobody Does It Like Me."

As for Miller the chanteuse, she was in her glory, surrounded by friends, family and well-wishers - not to mention the TV cameras that were filming her for an upcoming segment of the syndicated show "Life Moments" (noon, WNBC/4).

Miller's husband, whose travel is limited because he is on kidney dialysis, was hearing his wife perform outside their home for the first time.

"Sally has volume and she has a good voice," said Merle Miller, who watched her proudly from a ringside table. "Whether or not she sings exactly the right note ... the beauty part of it is she doesn't realize when she's singing a little bit sharp or flat ... her enthusiasm, I think, carries the day."

Daughter Deborah and her husband came in from Boston. She wore her mother's 56-year-old, navy blue and rhinestone wedding gown to show that her mother never put much stock in tradition, as if anyone needed convincing.

Deborah's twin, Wendy, came from Maryland with her husband. Earlier in the day, the couple had gassed up in the vicinity of the sniper shootings that have plagued their area recently, then drove north in the storm.

Also present was a man who had been a close friend of the Miller's son, Terry, who died of AIDS in 1995. There were friends from the Half Hollow Hills Library, where Miller produced special programs for many years. Friends from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington, in which the Millers are active, and also fellow members of an organization for parents of lesbians and gays whom the couple befriended when their son was alive.

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