Miriam Ehrmantraut Sellers
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Tuesday, September 23, 200
Miriam Sellers, 87, a matriarch of dance instruction who taught generations of mothers and daughters how to tap and slide with
grace, died Sept. 4 at Collingswood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rockville after a series of strokes. From 1950 to 1988,
she owned and operated the Sellers School of Dance in Wheaton. She spent another decade teaching dance at Montgomery
County senior centers after overhearing a woman at a nursing home say she had wanted all her life to learn to dance.
Mrs. Sellers won the 1990 Miss Senior Maryland award as well as a talent contest in the Ms. Senior America pageant.
Born Miriam Ehrmantraut, the native Washingtonian was the daughter of dance teachers with a studio in Georgetown. Her three
daughters now have dance studios in Maryland.
She began learning tap at 2 and a decade later joined her older brother in a ballroom act known professionally as Ed and Ann
Crystal; her brother's name was Ed, and she used her middle name. They entertained at churches and theaters along the East
Coast.
She later danced in vaudeville shows and clubs and entertained servicemen in USO shows during World War II. She attended
the old Western High School.
Her husband of 61 years, Garland Sellers, died in 1999.
Survivors include three daughters, Dawn Crafton-Rawlings of Washington, Diane Herbert of Dunkirk and Denise Shores
Schattenberg of Adamstown; a sister; seven grandchildren; 15 great-grandchildren; and a great-great-granddaughter.
-- Adam Bernstein