The
story of Helen Keller is the story of
a child who, at the age of 18 months,
was suddenly shut off from the world,
but who, against overwhelming odds,
waged a slow, hard, but successful battle
to reenter that same world. The inarticulate
little deaf and blind girl grew into
a highly intelligent and sensitive woman
who wrote, spoke, and labored incessantly
for the betterment of others. So powerful
a symbol of triumph over adversity did
she become that she has a definite place
in the history of our time and of times
to come.
Helen Adams Keller was born, physically
whole and healthy, in Tuscumbia, Alabama
on June 27, 1880 in a white, frame cottage
called "Ivy Green." On her
father's side she was descended from
Alexander Spottswood, a colonial governor
of Virginia, and connected with the
Lees and other Southern families. On
her mother's side, she was related to
a number of prominent New England families,
including the Hales, the Everetts, and
the Adamses. Her father, Captain Arthur
Keller, was the editor of a newspaper,
the North Alabamian. Captain Keller
also had a strong interest in public
life and was an influential figure in
his own community. In 1885, under the
Cleveland administration, he was appointed
Marshal of North Alabama.
The
illness that struck the infant Helen
Keller and left her deaf and blind,
was diagnosed as brain fever at the
time; perhaps it was scarlet fever.
Popular belief had it that the disease
left its victim an idiot. And as Helen
Keller grew from infancy into childhood,
wild, unruly, and with little real understanding
of the world around her, this belief
was seemingly confirmed.
Helen
Keller's real life began on a March
day in 1887 when she was a few months
short of seven years old. On that day,
which Miss Keller was always to call
"The most important day I can remember
in my life," Anne Mansfield Sullivan
came to Tuscumbia to be her teacher.
Miss Sullivan, a 20-year-old graduate
of the Perkins School for the Blind,
who had regained useful sight through
a series of operations, had come to
the Kellers through the sympathetic
interest of Alexander Graham Bell. From
that fateful day, the two--teacher and
pupil--were inseparable until the death
of the former in 1936.
How
Miss Sullivan turned the near savage
child into a responsible human being
and succeeded in awakening her marvelous
mind is familiar to millions, most notably
through William Gibson's play and film,
The Miracle Worker, Miss Keller's autobiography
of her early years, The Story of My
Life, and Joseph Lash's Helen and Teacher.
Miss
Sullivan began her task with a doll
the children at Perkins had made for
her to take to Helen. By spelling "d-o-l-l"
into the child's hand, she hoped to
teach her to connect objects with letters.
Helen quickly learned to make the letters
correctly, but did not know she was
spelling a word, or that words existed.
In the days that followed she learned
to spell a great many more words in
this uncomprehending way.
One
day she and "Teacher"--as
Helen always called her--went to the
outdoor pump. Miss Sullivan started
to draw water and put Helen's hand under
the spout. As the cool water gushed
over one hand, she spelled into the
other the word "w-a-t-e-r"
first slowly, then rapidly. Suddenly,
the signals had meaning in Helen's mind.
She knew that "water" meant
the wonderful cool something flowing
over her hand. Quickly, she stopped
and touched the earth and demanded its
letter name and by nightfall she had
learned 30 words.
Thus
began Helen Keller's education. She
proceeded quickly to master the alphabet,
both manual and in raised print for
blind readers, and gained facility in
reading and writing. In 1890, when she
was just 10, she expressed a desire
to learn to speak. Somehow she had found
out that a little deaf-blind girl in
Norway had acquired that ability. Miss
Sarah Fuller of the Horace Mann School
was her first speech teacher.
Even
when she was a little girl, Helen Keller
said, "Someday I shall go to college."
And go to college she did. In 1898 she
entered the Cambridge School for Young
Ladies to prepare for Radcliffe College.
She entered Radcliffe in the fall of
1900 and received her bachelor of arts
degree cum laude in 1904. Throughout
these years and until her own death
in 1936, Anne Sullivan was always by
Helen's side, laboriously spelling book
after book and lecture after lecture,
into her pupil's hand.
Helen
Keller's formal schooling ended when
she received her B.A. degree, but throughout
her life she continued to study and
stayed informed on all matters of importance
to modern people. In recognition of
her wide knowledge and many scholarly
achievements, she received honorary
doctoral degrees from Temple University
and Harvard University and from the
Universities of Glasgow, Scotland; Berlin,
Germany; Delhi, India; and Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was
also an Honorary Fellow of the Educational
Institute of Scotland.
Anne
Sullivan's marriage, in 1905, to John
Macy, an eminent critic and prominent
socialist, caused no change in the teacher-pupil
relationship. Helen went to live with
the Macys and both husband and wife
unstintingly gave their time to help
her with her studies and other activities.
While
still a student at Radcliffe, Helen
Keller began a writing career that was
to continue on and off for 50 years.
In 1902, The Story of My Life, which
had first appeared in serial form in
the Ladies Home Journal, appeared in
book form. This was always to be the
most popular of her works and today
is available in more than 50 languages,
including Marathi, Pushtu, Tagalog,
and Vedu. It is also available in several
paperback editions in this country.
Miss
Keller's other published works include
Optimism, an essay; The World I Live
In; The Song of the Stone Wall; Out
of the Dark; My Religion; Midstream--My
Later Life; Peace at Eventide; Helen
Keller in Scotland; Helen Keller's Journal;
Let Us Have Faith; Teacher, Anne Sullivan
Macy; and The Open Door.
In
addition, she was a frequent contributor
to magazines and newspapers, writing
most frequently on blindness, deafness,
socialism, social issues, and women's
rights. She used a braille typewriter
to prepare her manuscripts and then
copied them on a regular typewriter.
During
her lifetime, Helen Keller received
awards of great distinction too numerous
to recount fully here. An entire room,
called the Helen Keller Room, is devoted
to their display at the American Foundation
for the Blind in New York City. These
awards include Brazil's Order of the
Southern Cross; Japan's Sacred Treasure;
the Philippines' Golden Heart; Lebanon's
Gold Medal of Merit; and her own country's
highest honor, the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. Most of these awards were
bestowed on her in recognition of the
stimulation her example and presence
gave to work for the blind in those
countries. In 1933 she was elected to
membership in the National Institute
of Arts and Letters. During the Louis
Braille Centennial Commemoration in
1952, Miss Keller was made a Chevalier
of the French Legion of Honor at a ceremony
in the Sorbonne.
On
the 50th anniversary of her graduation,
Radcliffe College granted her its Alumnae
Achievement Award. Her Alma Mater also
showed its pride in her by dedicating
the Helen Keller Garden in her honor
and by naming a fountain in the garden
for Anne Sullivan Macy.
Miss
Keller also received the Americas Award
for Inter-American Unity, the Gold Medal
Award from the National Institute of
Social Sciences, the National Humanitarian
Award from Variety Clubs International,
and many others. She held honorary memberships
in scientific societies and philanthropic
organizations throughout the world.
Yet
another honor came to Helen Keller in
1954 when her birthplace, "Ivy
Green," in Tuscumbia, was made
a permanent shrine. It was dedicated
on May 7, 1954 with officials of the
American Foundation for the Blind and
many other agencies and organizations
present. In conjunction with this event,
the premiere of Miss Keller's film biography,
"The Unconquered," produced
by Nancy Hamilton and narrated by Katharine
Cornell, was held in the nearby city
of Birmingham. The film was later renamed
"Helen Keller in Her Story"
and in 1955 won an "Oscar"--the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
award as the best feature-length documentary
film of the year.
Miss
Keller was indirectly responsible for
two other "Oscars" a few years
later when Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke
won them for their portrayals of Anne
Sullivan and Helen Keller in the film
version of "The Miracle Worker."
More
rewarding to her than the many honors
she received, were the acquaintances
and friendships Helen Keller made with
most of the leading personalities of
her time. There were few world figures,
from Grover Cleveland to Charlie Chaplin,
Nehru, and John F. Kennedy, whom she
did not meet. And many, among them Katharine
Cornell, Van Wyck Brooks, Alexander
Graham Bell, and Jo Davidson, she counted
as friends. Two friends from her early
youth, Mark Twain and William James,
expressed beautifully what most of her
friends felt about 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!"
As
broad and wide ranging as her interests
were, Helen Keller never lost sight
of the needs of her fellow blind and
deaf-blind. From her youth, she was
always willing to help them by appearing
before legislatures, giving lectures,
writing articles, and above all, by
her own example of what a severely handicapped
person could accomplish. When the American
Foundation for the Blind, the national
clearinghouse for information on blindness,
was established in 1921, she at last
had an effective national outlet for
her efforts. From 1924 until her death
she was a member of the Foundation staff,
serving as counselor on national and
international relations. It was also
in 1924 that Miss Keller began her campaign
to raise the "Helen Keller Endowment
Fund" for the Foundation. Until
her retirement from public life, she
was tireless in her efforts to make
the Fund adequate for the Foundation's
needs.
Of
all her contributions to the Foundation,
Miss Keller was perhaps most proud of
her assistance in the formation in 1946
of its special service for deaf-blind
persons. She was, of course, deeply
concerned for this group of people and
was always searching for ways to help
those "less fortunate than myself."
Helen
Keller was as interested in the welfare
of blind persons in other countries
as she was for those in her own country;
conditions in the underdeveloped and
war-ravaged nations were of particular
concern. Her active participation in
this area of work for the blind began
as early as 1915 when the Permanent
Blind War Relief Fund, later called
the American Braille Press, was founded.
She was a member of its first board
of directors.
When
the American Braille Press became the
American Foundation for Overseas Blind
(now Helen Keller International) in
1946, Miss Keller was appointed counselor
on international relations. It was then
that she began the globe-circling tours
on behalf of the blind for which she
was so well known during her later years.
During seven trips between 1946 and
1957 she visited 35 countries on five
continents. In 1955, when she was 75
years old, she embarked on one of her
longest and most grueling journeys,
a 40,000-mile, five-month-long tour
through Asia. Wherever she traveled,
she brought new courage to millions
of blind people, and many of the efforts
to improve conditions among the blind
abroad can be traced directly to her
visits.
During
her lifetime, Helen Keller lived in
many different places--Tuscumbia, Alabama;
Cambridge and Wrentham, Massachusetts;
Forest Hills, New York, but perhaps
her favorite residence was her last,
the house in Westport, Connecticut she
called "Arcan Ridge." She
moved to this white, frame house surrounded
by mementos of her rich and busy life
after her beloved "Teacher's"
death in 1936. And it was Arcan Ridge
she called home for the rest of her
life. "Teacher's" death, although
it left her with a heavy heart, did
not leave Helen alone. Polly Thomson,
a Scots woman who joined the Keller
household in 1914, assumed the task
of assisting Helen with her work. After
Miss Thomson's death in 1960, a devoted
nurse-companion, Mrs. Winifred Corbally,
assisted her until her last day.
Helen
Keller made her last major public appearance
in 1961 at a Washington, DC, Lions Clubs
Meeting. At that meeting she received
the Lions Humanitarian Award for her
lifetime of 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 to Washington,
she also called on President Kennedy
at the White House. After that White
House visit, a reporter asked her how
many of our presidents she had met.
She replied that she did not know how
many, but that she had met all of them
since Grover Cleveland!
After
1961, Helen Keller lived quietly at
Arcan Ridge. She saw her family, close
friends, and associates from the American
Foundation for the Blind and the American
Foundation for Overseas Blind, and spent
much time reading. Her favorite books
were the Bible and volumes of poetry
and philosophy.
Despite
her retirement from public life, Helen
Keller was not forgotten. In 1964 she
received the previously mentioned Presidential
Medal of Freedom. In 1965, she was one
of 20 elected to the Women's Hall of
Fame at the New York World's Fair. Miss
Keller and Eleanor Roosevelt received
the most votes among the 100 nominees.
Helen
Keller died on June 1, 1968, at Arcan
Ridge, a few weeks short of her 88th
birthday. Her ashes were placed next
to her beloved companions, Anne Sullivan
Macy and Polly Thomson, in the St. Joseph's
Chapel of Washington Cathedral. On that
occasion a public memorial service was
held in the Cathedral. It was attended
by her family and friends, government
officials, 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."
