1880 - 1968

	The account of Helen Keller's life is one of tremendous achievement against severe disabilities. A blind, deaf and inarticulate child who grew up to be a highly intelligent and sensitive woman, working incessantly for the betterment of others. In her own words: 'The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand that can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work.'
Helen was born on 27th June 1880, in Tuscumbia, a small rural town in Northwest Alabama, USA. Her father, Captain Arthur Henley Keller, who had served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, was descended from Alexander Spottswood, a colonial governor of Virginia and her mother, Kate Adams Keller, was related to a number of prominent New England families. At the time of Helen's birth, the family lived modestly in a house built by her grandparents. Captain Keller earned his living as both a cotton plantation owner and the editor of a weekly newspaper, 'The North Alabamian'. He had a strong interest in public life and was an influential figure in his community, being appointed Marshal of North Alabama in 1885. Helen's mother, who was twenty years younger than her husband, worked on the plantation and saved money by making her own butter, lard, bacon and ham. At birth, Helen was a perfectly normal healthy baby, but at the age of nineteen months in February 1882, she became seriously ill with what was diagnosed at the time as 'brain fever'. To this day, no-one really knows what caused her illness; modern doctors believe it could have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Whatever the cause, for many days she was seriously ill and was not expected to live. However, the fever eventually subsided and the family was overjoyed at her recovery, but it wasn't long before her mother noticed that Helen did not respond when the dinner bell rang or when she passed her hand in front of her daughter's eyes. It became quite apparent that the illness had left the child both deaf and blind. Over the next few years, Helen became very difficult, smashing lamps and dishes and upsetting the whole household with her screaming and temper tantrums. It was an impossible situation and friends and relatives thought she should be put into an institution, believing her to be an idiot. By the time Helen was six, the family was desperate and were finding looking after such a wild and unruly child too much for them. Kate Keller had read in Charles Dickens' book 'American Notes' of the work that had been done with another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman and she decided to go to see a specialist doctor in Baltimore for advice. They were told that Helen would never see or hear again, but that they should not give up hope. The doctor believed that Helen could be taught and he advised them to see a local expert on the problems of deaf children. The expert was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who was concentrating on what he considered his true vocation, the teaching of deaf children. Bell recommended that the Kellers contact Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, and ask him to find a teacher for Helen. Michael Anagnos studied Helen's case and immediately recommended a former pupil of the institution, a young woman called Anne Sullivan.
Anne Sullivan	Anne Sullivan had lost most of her sight at the age of five and by the time she was ten, her mother had died and her father had deserted her. In 1876, she and her brother Jimmie were sent to the poorhouse.
Anne's brother died in the poorhouse, but Anne remained there until 1880, after which she attended the Perkins Institution to receive an education. During her time at the Institute, she had two operations on her eyes and regained sufficient sight to enable her to read normal print for short periods of time. Anne graduated from Perkins in 1886 and began looking for work, which was very difficult because of her poor eyesight. When Michael Anagnos contacted her offering her a job working as the teacher of Helen Keller, a deaf-blind mute, although she had no previous experience of such work, she accepted the post immediately. She was just twenty years old. Helen called the 3rd March 1887 'The most important day I can remember in my life”. That was the day that Anne Sullivan arrived at the Keller home for the first time and so began the close relationship between teacher and pupil which was to last until Anne's death in 1936. The Early Days From the very first day, Anne began the teaching process by encouraging Helen to finger spell. The children at Perkins had made a doll for Helen, so by spelling the work 'd-o-l-l' into the child's hand she hoped to teach her to connect objects with letters. The next word she taught was 'cake' and although Helen was quick to repeat the finger movements, she could not understand what they meant. She learned to spell a great many more words in this way, but they meant nothing to her. Anne tried hard to help her, but at the same time she was having great difficulty in trying to control Helen's continuing bad behaviour. It was decided that Anne and Helen should move into a small cottage on the land of the main house in the hope that if the two of them lived quietly together, Helen's behaviour would improve. In particular, her table manners were appalling and she had started eating with her hands from the plates of everyone at the table. Anne's efforts to improve Helen's table manners and make her brush her own hair and button her shoes led to more and more temper tantrums and she had to resort to punishing the tantrums by refusing to 'talk' with Helen by spelling words on her hands. However, after a few weeks, Helen's behaviour gradually started to improve as the bond between the two started to grow and on 5th April 1887, a month after Anne had started her teaching, everything changed and the 'miracle' happened. 'The Miracle' Up until this point, Helen was still unable to understand fully the meaning of words, but this changed when Anne led her to the water pump to draw water. She put Helen's hand under the spout, and as the water spurted over her hand, she spelled the word 'w-a-t-e-r' into the other hand. By the look on the child's face, Anne realised that Helen understood. Helen later described the incident: 'We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed on the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.' Helen immediately indicated that she wanted to know the name of the pump and the trellis. All the way back to the house she learned the name of everything she touched and also asked for Anne's name – Anne spelt out the name 'Teacher' on Helen's hand, and this was how she referred to her from then on. Within the space of a few hours, Helen learned the spelling of thirty new words and their meaning. From then on, Helen's progress was amazing. Her ability to learn was far in advance of anything anyone had seen before in somebody without sight or hearing. Before long, Anne was able to teach Helen to read, first with raised letters and then with Braille, and also to write with both ordinary and Braille typewriters. Through articles written by Michael Anagnos, Helen became quite famous, and pictures of her 'reading' or stroking her dog, appeared in national newspapers. She visited Alexander Graham Bell again and also visited President Cleveland at the White House. By 1890, she was living at the Perkins Institute and being taught by Anne. At the age of 10, she said she wanted to learn to speak, having heard about a deaf-blind girl in Norway who had successfully been taught. Over the next year, Mary Swift Lamson tried to teach her, but although she was able to understand what somebody else was saying by touching their lips and throat, her desperate efforts to speak herself, were unsuccessful. Later, it was believed that Helen's vocal chords were not properly trained prior to her being taught to speak. In 1894, Helen and Anne met John D Wright and Dr. Thomas Humason who were planning to open a school in New York City to teach speech to the deaf. The two men assured Helen that her speech could be improved, so she agreed to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf. Unfortunately, Helen's speech never really improved beyond the sounds that only Anne and others very close to her could understand. Radcliffe College When she was a little girl, Helen Keller insisted 'Someday I shall go to College'. Her ambition was realised when, in 1896 she entered the Cambridge School for Young Ladies in preparation for Radcliffe College. In the autumn of 1900, she enrolled at the College and was the first deaf-blind person ever to attend an institution of higher learning. Life at Radcliffe was difficult for Helen and Anne and Anne's already poor eyesight deteriorated with the huge amount of work involved. During their time at the College Helen began to write about her life, working both in Braille and on a normal typewriter. During this period, they met John Albert Macy who helped edit Helen's first book 'The Story of My Life'. It was published in 1903 and although not very successful at the time, has since become a classic and today is available in more than fifty languages, including Marathi, Pushtu, Tagalog and Vedu. On June 28th 1904, Helen received her BA degree cum laude, being the first deaf-blind person to earn a BA degree. During the four years at Radcliffe, and until her death, Anne Sullivan was always at her side, laboriously spelling every book and every lecture into her pupil's hand. John Macy was an eminent critic and prominent socialist and became very good friends with the two women. In May 1905 he and Anne Sullivan married, but this caused no change to the teacher-pupil relationship. The three lived together in Wrentham, Massachusetts and both John and Anne gave Helen their time and help with her studies and other activities. During this time, Helen wrote 'The World I Live In', which demonstrated for the first time her thoughts on her world. John Macy introduced her to a new and revolutionary way of viewing the world and in 1909; Helen became a member of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts. In 1913, a series of essays on socialism called 'Out of the Dark', were published, after which Helen's political views were known to her admiring public. From her time at Radcliffe, and for the next fifty years, Helen had many books published and was also was a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, writing most frequently on blindness, deafness, socialism, social issues and women's rights. Travelling the World In the following years, Helen and Anne toured the world giving lectures, speaking of her experiences and beliefs, interpreted sentence by sentence by Anne Macy. These were followed by question and answer sessions. Although they made a good living from the lectures, by 1918 the demand had diminished so they changed the format, touring with a more light-hearted 'vaudeville' show, demonstrating Helen's first understanding of the word 'water'. These shows were very successful and they were offered the chance to make a film in Hollywood on the story of Helen's life, called 'Deliverance'. Helen was not happy with the glamorous nature of the film and it did not prove to be a financial success. They continued with their successful vaudeville appearances, with Helen answering questions on her life and politics and Anne translating her answers. They were earning up to two thousand dollars a week, a considerable sum of money at that time. In 1918, Helen, Anne and John moved to Forest Hills in New York, where Helen used their new home as a base for her extensive fundraising tours for the American Foundation for the Blind. She collected money and campaigned tirelessly to improve the living and working conditions of blind people who, at that time, were usually badly educated and living in asylums. Her efforts were a major factor in changing these conditions. Helen's mother Kate died in 1921 from an unknown illness and in the same year Anne fell ill, followed in 1922 by a severe case of bronchitis which left her unable to speak above a whisper. As she was unable to work on stage anymore, Polly Thompson, who had been engaged as a Secretary in 1914, took on the role of explaining Helen to the theatre going public. They spent a lot of their time touring the world raising money for blind people and in 1931 they met King George and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace, who were said to have been deeply impressed by Helen's ability to understand what people said through touch. Meanwhile, Anne's health was getting progressively worse and by 1935 she was totally blind. On 20th October 1936, she died at the age of 70, bringing to a close one of the most remarkable friendships on record. As Helen Keller's teacher she had pioneered in techniques of education for the handicapped, basing her instruction on a system of touch teaching rather than attempting to explain the properties of an object, but perhaps her greatest honour was Helen Keller's belief that Anne Sullivan was God's gift to her. After Anne's death Helen and Polly moved to Arcan Ridge in Westport, Connecticut, which became Helen's home for the rest of her life. After World War Two, Helen and Polly continued travelling the world fundraising for the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind, visiting Japan, Australia, South America, Europe and Africa. Whilst on their travels they learnt that a fire had destroyed their home at Arcan Ridge and although it was eventually rebuilt, they lost many of their mementoes, including the book Helen had been writing about Anne Sullivan which she had called 'Teacher'. During this time, Polly Thompson's health had begun to deteriorate and whilst in Japan, she had a mild stroke. She was advised to stop the continuous touring, and although initially they did slow down, they continued their touring once Polly had recovered. In 1953, a documentary film 'The Unconquered' was made about Helen's life, which won an Academy Award as the best feature length documentary. At the same time, Helen started working again on her book 'Teacher'; seven years after the original had been destroyed. It was finally published in 1955. In 1957 Polly had another stroke from she never fully recovered and she died on March 21st 1960. Her ashes were deposited at the National Cathedral in Washington DC next to those of Anne. The nurse who had been engaged to care for Polly in her last years, Winnie Corbally, was also to take care of Helen in her remaining years. The Miracle Worker In 1957 the 'Miracle Worker' was first performed; a drama portraying Anne Sullivan's first success in communicating with Helen as a child. Originally it appeared as a live television play in the United States and in 1959 was re-written as a Broadway play, opening to rave reviews, and running for almost two years. In 1962 it was made into a film, with both the actresses playing Anne and Helen receiving Oscars for their performances. Retirement Helen made her last major public appearance in 1961 at a Washington DC, Lions Club Meeting, where she received the Lions Humanitarian Award for her lifetime service to humanity and for providing the inspiration for the adoption by Lions International of their sight conservation and aid to blind programs. During that visit, she also called on President Kennedy at the White House and afterwards, a reporter asked her how many of the presidents she had met. She replied that she did not know how many, but that she had met them all since Grover Cleveland. During her lifetime Helen received many awards of great distinction and there is an entire room at the American Foundation for the Blind in New York which is devoted to their display. Most of these awards were given to her in recognition of the stimulation her example and presence gave to work for the blind in the many countries she had visited. More rewarding to Helen than the many honours she received, were the acquaintances and friendships she made with most of the personalities of her time, including John F. Kennedy and Nehru. Two friends from her early youth, Mark Twain and William James, expressed perfectly what her friends thought of her. Mark Twain said 'The two most interesting characters of the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller.' William James wrote 'But whatever you were or are, you're a blessing!' In October 1961 Helen suffered a series of strokes and her public life came to an end. She spent her remaining years being cared for by Winnie at her home in Arcan Ridge, seeing her family, close friends and associates from the American Foundation for the Blind and the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind. She spent much time reading, her favourite books being the Bible and volumes of poetry and philosophy. However, she was not forgotten and in 1964 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Lyndon Johnson. A year later, together with another nineteen women, she was elected to the Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair. Helen and Eleanor Roosevelt had received the most votes among the one hundred nominees. On June 1st 1968, at Arcan Ridge, Helen Keller died peacefully in her sleep, a few weeks short of her eighty-eighth birthday. She was cremated in Bridgeport, Connecticut and a funeral service was held at the National Cathedral in Washington DC, where the urn containing her ashes were later put next to her beloved companions, Anne Sullivan, her 'Teacher', and Polly Thompson. On that occasion, a public memorial service was held in the Cathedral and was attended by her family and friends, government officials and prominent persons from all walks of life and delegations from most of the organizations for the blind and deaf. In his eulogy, Senator Lister Hill of Alabama expressed the feelings of the whole world when he said of Helen Keller : 'She will live on, one of the few, the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and faith.' Today, Helen's final resting place is a popular tourist attraction and the bronze plaque erected to commemorate her life, written in Braille, has already been replaced twice due to the many people visiting the chapel and touching the braille dots. Had she been born today, possibly Helen's life would have been different. Her dream was to be able to talk, and maybe present-day teaching methods would have helped her realize this dream. Technology now enables blind and deaf-blind people, like Helen, to communicate directly and independently with anybody in the world. Although Helen Keller may not have been directly responsible for the development of these technologies and teaching methods, with the help of Anne Sullivan, through her writings, lectures and the way she lived her life, she showed millions of people that disability need not be the end of the world.

Helen Keller

Anne Sullivan