Miller was born with defective retinas, McGinnis said, and could barely see large text inches from his face, let alone cellular details. But as a public-school student in California in the 1970s and 1980s — among the first wave of blind students to sit in classrooms alongside the sighted — Miller had vowed that his disability would not hold him back.

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Unable to see what teachers were writing on the board, Miller memorized the content of every lesson beforehand, his mother said. That way, when called on, her son could give answers just like his peers.

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“I am sure there were times when he was frustrated,” McGinnis said, “but there was nothing that would stop him from doing anything he wanted to. He just did it.”

That determination led to a career with the U.S. Education Department’s Rehabilitation Services Administration — where he helped students with disabilities like his — and to a rich and busy life filled with friends and travel. Both were cut short Monday when Miller, who lived in Alexandria, died of complications of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. He was 52 and otherwise healthy, his mother said.

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Miller started having symptoms, including a fever and cough, in mid-March, shortly after returning from a trip to Jordan that was curtailed by the virus. Miller’s doctor at first told him to hunker down and wait out the illness at home, but his condition kept deteriorating, his mother said. He entered the hospital March 28, was put on a ventilator the next day and died Monday after he began bleeding internally and suffered organ failure.

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In the hours since, tributes from Miller’s friends and colleagues have flooded Facebook and McGinnis’s phone, she said. Everyone is eager to tell her how many lives Miller shaped, how many blind students her son uplifted.

On Tuesday morning, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos phoned McGinnis to offer her condolences and to thank her for Miller’s service.

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In a message to department staff, Miller’s direct supervisor, Carol Dobak, praised his lifetime spent in service of those with disabilities.

“Brian believed strongly in the capacity of individuals with disabilities to engage in all aspects of life,” Dobak wrote, “and his own life was a reflection of this philosophy.”

That started in grade school, McGinnis said, when she and her son confronted a system ill-equipped to serve the blind. She remembers endless battles to secure accommodations her son needed: extra-large computer screens, special TVs, books in Braille. She remembers, too, his listening to audiobooks late into the night, and his unwavering love of learning — especially history.

“All during school, they seemed to feel, ‘Why would a blind person need a degree?’ ” McGinnis said. “His thought, of course, was that he needs it even more.”

Despite the science teacher’s worry, Miller graduated from high school, earned a degree in political science from San Diego State University and got a master’s and a PhD in history from the University of Iowa.

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McGinnis keeps a blue, bound copy of her son’s 471-page dissertation, “Speaking for Themselves: The Blind Civil Rights Movement and the Battle for the Iowa Braille School,” on a living room coffee table in her Michigan home. As she used to tell her son: It’s too heavy to hang on the refrigerator.

Despite Miller’s eventual academic success, he never forgot his earlier struggles. That’s why he wanted to work for the Education Department, his mother said.

“Some of the programs we were petitioning,” she said, “are now the very programs he was overseeing in his position with the department.”

An avid singer since high school, he joined the a cappella group the Alexandria Harmonizers, performing in places including Scotland, China and Normandy. And he traveled as often as he could. He was fluent in four languages, including Spanish, Russian and German, and tried to visit five new countries each year. He made lists of every place he traveled, every airline he flew and every famous site he saw. He hoped eventually to set foot in more than 100 countries; by the time he died, he had visited at least 65 countries on six continents, he wrote online.

“Nothing would stop him,” McGinnis said, “except this stupid covid-19.”

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Miller had recently launched a blog providing tips to other blind travelers. One article detailed must-have items: a spare white cane, Braille playing cards, a travel pack of wet wipes. In another, published April 13, he wrote of his desire to live “a good long life.”