Helen Keller and Polly Thompson vintage original 6x8 inch photo from 1938 .

this photo can be seen in
October 11, 1938
HELEN KELLER "SEES" MINNESOTA BATTLE PURDUE

Ames Daily Tribune from Ames, Iowa · Page 6

Location:: Ames, Iowa
Issue Date:: Tuesday, October 11, 1938
Page:: Page 6

When Anne Sullivan (whose eyesight began to significantly fail near the end of her life) was no longer able to travel with Helen Keller, Polly Thomson filled the role. After Annie died (in 1936), Polly became Helen's constant companion and the verbal communicator between Helen and the public - until Polly also died, in 1957.

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, is now a museum[1] and sponsors an annual "Helen Keller Day". Her birthday on June 27 is commemorated as Helen Keller Day in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and was authorized at the federal level by presidential proclamation by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, the 100th anniversary of her birth.

A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled and outspoken in her convictions. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism, antimilitarism, and other similar causes. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971[2] and was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.[3] Keller proved to the world that deaf people could all learn to communicate and that they could survive in the hearing world. She also taught that deaf people are capable of doing things that hearing people can do. One of the most famous deaf people in history, she is an idol to many deaf people in the world.[4]

Contents

    1 Early childhood and illness
    2 Formal education
    3 Example of her lectures
    4 Companions
    5 Political activities
    6 Writings
    7 Later life
    8 Portrayals
    9 Posthumous honors
    10 Archival material
    11 See also
    12 References
    13 Further reading
        13.1 Primary sources
        13.2 Historiography
    14 External links

Early childhood and illness
Keller with Anne Sullivan vacationing on Cape Cod in July 1888

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama.[5] Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green,[1] that Helen's grandfather had built decades earlier.[6] She had two siblings, Mildred Campbell and Phillip Brooks Keller, and two older half-brothers from her father's prior marriage, James and William Simpson Keller.[7][8]

Her father, Arthur H. Keller,[9] spent many years as an editor for the Tuscumbia North Alabamian, and had served as a captain for the Confederate Army.[5][6] Her paternal grandmother was second cousins with Robert E. Lee.[10] Her mother, Kate Adams,[11] was the daughter of Charles W. Adams, a Confederate general.[12] Though originally from Massachusetts, Charles Adams also fought for the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, earning the rank of colonel (and acting brigadier-general). Her paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland.[10][13] One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller reflected on this coincidence in her first autobiography, stating "that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his."[10]

Helen Keller was born with the ability to see and hear. At 19 months old, she contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain",[14] which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis.[5][15] The illness left her both deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs;[16]:11 by the age of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family. Even though blind and deaf, Helen Keller had passed through many obstacles and she learned to live with her disabilities. She learned how to tell which person was walking by from the vibrations their footsteps would make. The sex and age of the person could be identified by how strong and continuous the steps were.[17]

In 1886, Keller's mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deaf and blind woman, Laura Bridgman, dispatched the young Keller, accompanied by her father, to seek out physician J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice.[18] Chisholm referred the Kellers to Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston. Michael Anagnos, the school's director, asked 20-year-old former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship during which Sullivan evolved into Keller's governess and eventually her companion.[16]:Introduction, Key Figures

Sullivan arrived at Keller's house in March 1887, and immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller was frustrated, at first, because she did not understand that every object had a word uniquely identifying it. In fact, when Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the mug.[19] Keller's breakthrough in communication came the next month, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world.

Helen Keller was viewed as isolated, but was very in touch with the outside world. She was able to enjoy music by feeling the beat and she was able to have a strong connection with animals through touch. She was delayed at picking up language, but that did not stop her from having a voice.[20]
Formal education

In May 1888, Keller started attending the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1894, Keller and Sullivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and to learn from Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1896, they returned to Massachusetts, and Keller entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College,[21] where she lived in Briggs Hall, South House. Her admirer, Mark Twain, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, who, with his wife Abbie, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher and pedagogue Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first to discover her literary talent.[22]

Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak, and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech by reading their lips with her hands—her sense of touch had heightened. She became proficient at using braille[23] and reading sign language with her hands as well. Shortly before World War I, with the assistance of the Zoellner Quartet, she determined that by placing her fingertips on a resonant tabletop she could experience music played close by.[24]
Example of her lectures

On January 22, 1916, Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small town of Menomonie in western Wisconsin to deliver a lecture at the Mabel Tainter Memorial Building. Details of her talk were provided in the weekly Dunn County News on January 22, 1916:

    A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on "Happiness," and it will be remembered always as a piece of inspired teaching by those who heard it.

When part of the account was reprinted in the January 20, 2016, edition of the paper under the heading "From the Files", the column compiler added

    According to those who attended, Helen Keller spoke of the joy that life gave her. She was thankful for the faculties and abilities that she did possess and stated that the most productive pleasures she had were curiosity and imagination. Keller also spoke of the joy of service and the happiness that came from doing things for others ... Keller imparted that "helping your fellow men were one's only excuse for being in this world and in the doing of things to help one's fellows lay the secret of lasting happiness." She also told of the joys of loving work and accomplishment and the happiness of achievement. Although the entire lecture lasted only a little over an hour, the lecture had a profound impact on the audience.[25]

Companions
Helen Keller in 1899 with lifelong companion and teacher Anne Sullivan. Photo taken by Alexander Graham Bell at his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech.

Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Sullivan married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thomson was hired to keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who had no experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller.[26]

Keller moved to Forest Hills, Queens, together with Sullivan and Macy, and used the house as a base for her efforts on behalf of the American Foundation for the Blind.[27] "While in her thirties Helen had a love affair, became secretly engaged, and defied her teacher and family by attempting an elopement with the man she loved."[28] He was "Peter Fagan, a young Boston Herald reporter who was sent to Helen's home to act as her private secretary when lifelong companion, Anne, fell ill."[29]

Anne Sullivan died in 1936 after a coma as a result of coronary thrombosis,[30]:266 with Keller holding her hand.[31]:255 Keller and Thomson moved to Connecticut. They traveled worldwide and raised funds for the blind. Thomson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered, and died in 1960. Winnie Corbally, a nurse whom they originally hired to care for Thomson in 1957, stayed on after her death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life.[27]
Political activities
Helen Keller portrait, 1904. Due to a protruding left eye, Keller was usually photographed in profile. Both her eyes were replaced in adulthood with glass replicas for "medical and cosmetic reasons".[31]
"The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands—the ownership and control of their livelihoods—are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease."
—Helen Keller, 1911[32]

Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. The Deaf community was widely impacted by her. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about Deaf people's conditions.[33] She was a suffragette, pacifist, radical socialist, birth control supporter, and opponent of Woodrow Wilson. In 1915 she and George A. Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Keller traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every U.S. President from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain. Keller and Twain were both considered radicals at the beginning of the 20th century, and as a consequence, their political views have been forgotten or glossed over in the popular mind.[34]

Keller was a member of the Socialist Party and actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the impacts of war. She had speech therapy in order to have her voice heard better by the public. When the Rockefeller-owned press refused to print her articles, she protested until her work was finally published.[30] She supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Before reading Progress and Poverty, Helen Keller was already a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in the right direction.[35] She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature."[36]

Keller claimed that newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development." Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her political views:

    At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. ... Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.[37]

Keller joined the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, known as the Wobblies) in 1912,[34] saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In Why I Became an IWW,[38] Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:

    I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a life of shame that ended in blindness.

The last sentence refers to prostitution and syphilis, the former a frequent cause of the latter, and the latter a leading cause of blindness. In the same interview, Keller also cited the 1912 strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts for instigating her support of socialism.

Like Alexander Graham Bell and others, Keller supported eugenics. In 1915 she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, stating that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals.[39][40] Keller also expressed concerns about human overpopulation.[41][42]
Writings
Helen Keller, circa 1912

Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles.

One of her earliest pieces of writing, at age 11, was The Frost King (1891). There were allegations that this story had been plagiarized from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. An investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have experienced a case of cryptomnesia, which was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while the memory remained in her subconscious.[27]

At age 22, Keller published her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), with help from Sullivan and Sullivan's husband, John Macy. It recounts the story of her life up to age 21 and was written during her time in college.

Keller wrote The World I Live In in 1908, giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world.[43] Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913.

When Keller was young, Anne Sullivan introduced her to Phillips Brooks, who introduced her to Christianity, Keller famously saying: "I always knew He was there, but I didn't know His name!"[44][45][46]

Her spiritual autobiography, My Religion,[47] was published in 1927 and then in 1994 extensively revised and re-issued under the title Light in My Darkness. It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Christian revelator and theologian who gives a spiritual interpretation of the teachings of the Bible and who claims that the second coming of Jesus Christ has already taken place. Adherents use several names to describe themselves, including Second Advent Christian, Swedenborgian, and New Church.

Keller described the progressive views of her belief in these words:

    But in Swedenborg's teaching it [Divine Providence] is shown to be the government of God's Love and Wisdom and the creation of uses. Since His Life cannot be less in one being than another, or His Love manifested less fully in one thing than another, His Providence must needs be universal ... He has provided religion of some kind everywhere, and it does not matter to what race or creed anyone belongs if he is faithful to his ideals of right living.[47]

Later life

Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home.[27]

On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' two highest civilian honors. In 1965 she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.[27]

Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut, a few weeks short of her eighty-eighth birthday. A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., her body was cremated and her ashes were placed there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson. She was buried at the Washington National Cathedral.[48]
Portrayals
"Anne Sullivan – Helen Keller Memorial"—a bronze sculpture in Tewksbury, Massachusetts

Keller's life has been interpreted many times. She appeared in a silent film, Deliverance (1919), which told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.[49]

She was also the subject of the documentaries Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated by Katharine Cornell, and The Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced by Hearst Entertainment.

The Miracle Worker is a cycle of dramatic works ultimately derived from her autobiography, The Story of My Life. The various dramas each describe the relationship between Keller and Sullivan, depicting how the teacher led her from a state of almost feral wildness into education, activism, and intellectual celebrity. The common title of the cycle echoes Mark Twain's description of Sullivan as a "miracle worker." Its first realization was the 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay of that title by William Gibson. He adapted it for a Broadway production in 1959 and an Oscar-winning feature film in 1962, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. It was remade for television in 1979 and 2000.

In 1984, Keller's life story was made into a TV movie called The Miracle Continues.[50] This film that entailed the semi-sequel to The Miracle Worker recounts her college years and her early adult life. None of the early movies hint at the social activism that would become the hallmark of Keller's later life, although a Disney version produced in 2000 states in the credits that she became an activist for social equality.

The Bollywood movie Black (2005) was largely based on Keller's story, from her childhood to her graduation.[51]

A documentary called Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced by the Swedenborg Foundation in the same year. The film focuses on the role played by Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology in her life and how it inspired Keller's triumph over her triple disabilities of blindness, deafness and a severe speech impediment.[citation needed]

On March 6, 2008, the New England Historic Genealogical Society announced that a staff member had discovered a rare 1888 photograph showing Helen and Anne, which, although previously published, had escaped widespread attention.[52] Depicting Helen holding one of her many dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne Sullivan Macy.[53]

Video footage showing Helen Keller learning to mimic speech sounds also exists.[54]

A biography of Helen Keller was written by the German Jewish author H.J.Kaeser.

A 10-by-7-foot painting titled The Advocate: Tribute to Helen Keller was created by three artists from Kerala as a tribute to Helen Keller. The Painting was created in association with a non-profit organization Art d'Hope Foundation, artists groups Palette People and XakBoX Design & Art Studio.[55] This painting was created for a fundraising event to help blind students in India [56] and was inaugurated by M. G. Rajamanikyam, IAS (District Collector Ernakulam) on Helen Keller day (June 27, 2016).[57] The painting depicts the major events of Helen Keller's life and is one of the biggest paintings done based on Helen Keller's life.
Posthumous honors
Helen Keller as depicted on the Alabama state quarter

A preschool for the deaf and hard of hearing in Mysore, India, was originally named after Helen Keller by its founder, K. K. Srinivasan. In 1999, Keller was listed in Gallup's Most Widely Admired People of the 20th century.

In 2003, Alabama honored its native daughter on its state quarter.[58] The Alabama state quarter is the only circulating US coin to feature braille.[59]

The Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama, is dedicated to her.[60]

Streets are named after Helen Keller in Zürich, Switzerland, in the USA, in Getafe, Spain, in Lod, Israel,[61] in Lisbon, Portugal[62] and in Caen, France.

A stamp was issued in 1980 by the United States Postal Service depicting Keller and Sullivan, to mark the centennial of Keller's birth.

On October 7, 2009, a bronze statue of Helen Keller was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection, as a replacement for the State of Alabama's former 1908 statue of the education reformer Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry. It is displayed in the United States Capitol Visitor Center and depicts Keller as a seven-year-old child standing at a water pump. The statue represents the seminal moment in Keller's life when she understood her first word: W-A-T-E-R, as signed into her hand by teacher Anne Sullivan. The pedestal base bears a quotation in raised Latin and braille letters: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart."[63] The statue is the first one of a person with a disability and of a child to be permanently displayed at the U.S. Capitol.[64][65][66]
Archival material

Archival material of Helen Keller stored in New York was lost when the Twin Towers were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.[67][68][69]

The Helen Keller Archives are owned by the American Foundation for the Blind.[70]

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

release dates: March 6-12 11-1 (04)

By BETTY DEBNAM

TM TM

Imagine what life would be like if

you could not see or hear. Imagine you

did not know any way to communicate

with other people. Imagine being shut

inside a confusing world with no way

to ask for help.

Helen Keller lived in such a world.

When she was 19 months old, she

became very ill. The disease left her

blind and deaf.

No one knows what illness struck

her, although some believe it may

have been scarlet fever.

And yet, in spite of these problems,

she grew up to graduate from college

with high honors. She wrote 14 books,

had a vaudeville act, met seven

presidents, and traveled to 39 countries

giving speeches on good causes.

Her story was made famous by the

Broadway play and movie “The

Miracle Worker.”

Helen Keller visits a wounded soldier at a

North Carolina hospital in 1945. During

World War II she traveled throughout the

country giving support to blinded and

wounded veterans.

Helen as a child

Helen Keller grew up in the country

near Tuscumbia, Ala. She was a

smart, loving child. But she also

misbehaved a lot. Her parents felt so

bad that she couldn’t see or hear that

they didn’t teach her proper behavior.

Helen also acted naughty because

she was upset when she couldn’t

communicate with others.

She wandered around the table,

grabbing food from other people’s plates.

One time she locked her mother in a

cupboard. She bit and scratched people.

Some members of her family thought

she would always be impossible to

handle at home.

Teacher

When Helen was about 7, inventor

Alexander Graham Bell helped

Helen’s worried parents find a

remarkable teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Anne Sullivan knew she had to be

strict with her naughty student. For

example, she would not let Helen eat

until Helen sat properly, with her

napkin on her lap. At first Helen

rebelled, fighting her teacher for hours.

Anne Sullivan took Helen to a little

cottage on the family’s property so she

could teach her without the family’s

interference. In just two weeks, Anne

Sullivan taught her much about how

to behave.

However, when they returned to the

family house, Helen continued to

throw tantrums occasionally.

The miracle

One day, during one such tantrum,

Anne Sullivan made Helen

come out to the yard.

While she pumped water

into Helen’s hand, she

spelled out “w-a-t-e-r”

using a special hand

alphabet.

And then the miracle happened.

Suddenly Helen understood. She

understood that what her teacher was

spelling stood for actual water. She

realized words had meaning.

From then on, everything changed.

That day alone she learned about 30

words.

An Amazing Woman

The Story of Helen Keller

Please include all of the appropriate registered trademark symbols and copyright lines in any publication of The Mini Page®. photos courtesy American Foundation for the Blind

Helen Keller (1880-1968) is about 7 in this

picture. She loved dogs her whole life, and

always had at least one. (This is a blackand-white photo colored in by an artist.)

The Mini Page celebrates

Women’s History Month with a

story about a woman who led an

incredible life, Helen Keller.

Mini Spy . . .

Mini Spy’s class is learning braille. See if you can find:

• number 7 • feather • pencil • toothbrush • letter D

• umbrella • cat

• ruler • carrot

• man in moon

• donkey head

• elephant head

• key • muffin

• number 2

• letter A • bell

• number 8

• football • sock

• letter C

Words and names that remind us of Helen Keller are hidden in the

blocks below. Some words are hidden backward or diagonally. See

if you can find: DEAF, BLIND, MEDALS, VAUDEVILLE, MIRACLE,

TEACHER, ANNE, SULLIVAN, DOGS, SENSES, WATER, SPELL,

AMAZING, READ, BRAILLE, NATURE, INSPIRING, TRANSLATING.

Helen Keller TRY ’N

FIND

S T E L L I ARBB LL EPS

U E DWAMA Z I NGR I V L

L AQ E AV S E S N E S EMD

L CC K AT S L AD EMUAD

I HHMNF EHE RUT AND

V EB L I NDRE LCAR IM

A RR V EL L I V EDUAVV

N RE NNAGN I R I PSN I

G N I T AL SNAR TDOGS

Basset Brown

The News

Hound’s

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate 11-2 (04); release dates: March 6-12 ®

TM TM

The Hand Alphabet

Please include all of the appropriate registered trademark symbols and copyright lines in any publication of The Mini Page®.

Manual alphabet

Anne Sullivan opened up Helen

Keller’s world when she taught Helen to

communicate through the hand, or

manual, alphabet.

A blind or deaf person can “read”

words by feeling the

hand of the other

person. The person

spells out words in

the palm of the blind

or deaf person’s hand.

It is very close to the sign-language

alphabet that deaf people use to

communicate by sight.

Experts believe the manual alphabet

was invented by medieval Spanish

monks who had made a vow of silence.

In the 1700s the French

began using it to teach

people with hearing and

speech problems. Later,

British and American

educators changed it some so it could be

felt by deaf-blind persons.

These photos from the

American Foundation for

the Blind are of Helen

Keller’s hands as she forms

the letters of the manual

alphabet.

HELEN KELLER

IS INSPIRING!

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

11-3 (04); release dates: March 6-12

Rookie Cookie’s Recipe

Crunchy Cinnamon Pecans

Meet Amber Tamblyn

Amber Tamblyn, 20, is the star of

the television show “Joan of Arcadia.”

She was born in Los Angeles and

grew up in a family of artists. Her

father was an actor, and her mother

was a singer and artist. When Amber

was 10 years old, an agent saw her

starring in the show “Pippi

Longstocking,” and her television

and movie career began.

She has guest-starred on television shows such as

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Amber likes to write poetry and enjoys singing,

dancing and theater. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

You’ll need:

• 1/4 cup butter

• 3 tablespoons light brown sugar

• 1 tablespoon white sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 2 cups pecans, shelled

What to do:

1. Melt butter in a microwave oven on high for 25 seconds.

2. Remove butter from microwave and mix in sugars and

cinnamon.

3. Add the pecans and toss until well-coated.

4. Spread pecans on an ungreased cookie sheet.

5. Bake in a preheated 250-degree oven for 30 minutes.

6. Remove from oven and let cool on wax paper.

Makes 4 half-cup servings.

Note: You will need an adult to help you with this recipe.

All the following jokes have something in common. Can

you guess the common theme or category?

John: Do you believe in free speech?

Mike: Of course.

John: Then may I use your telephone?

Charlene: What number does a pig dial

when it needs help?

Ned: Swine-one-one!

Adele: What type of phone do

imposters use?

Victor: Phoneys!

Go dot to dot an_______________________________ State: ____________ Zip: ___________

Learn all about

each of the presidents…

• Full-page pictures

• Signatures

• Biographical information

• Dates of presidential terms

• Important achievements

• Stories about the many roles

of the president, the electoral

vote process, political terms,

and a visit to the White House!

George W. Bush 86

Please include all of the appropriate registered trademark symbols and copyright lines in any publication of The Mini Page®.

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate 11-4 (04); release dates: March 6-12 ®

The Mini Page is created and edited by

Betty Debnam

Staff Artist

Wendy Daley

Associate Editors

Tali Denton

Lucy Lien

Please include all of the appropriate registered trademark symbols and copyright lines in any publication of The Mini Page®.

The excitement of learning

Helen learned to speak by feeling

how Anne Sullivan’s mouth moved

when she spoke.

She learned to read and write

French, German, Greek and Latin in

braille.* She even learned to play chess.

*Braille is a form of writing where letters

are formed by raised dots.

Amazing abilities

Helen was able to do wonderful

things sighted people could not do.

She could remember people’s

handshakes years after last meeting

them. She could

identify hundreds

of plants by their

smell.

Once, at a competition held by a

group of rug experts, all the judges

were blindfolded. Each judge had

about an hour to feel many different

rugs. Then they had to identify each

one by touch. Only Helen was able to

identify all the rugs.

On stage

When Helen was in her 40s, she

and Anne Sullivan went on a

vaudeville* tour to talk about her

life. People were curious about what

it was like to be deaf and blind, and

yet still be in control of your life.

*Vaudeville shows had many different

acts, including comedy, music and

dancing.

Helen Keller was presented with

an Academy Award in 1955 because

of how inspiring her life was. It was

a duplicate of an award that was

given to the movie maker of the

documentary, “Helen Keller in Her

Story.”

More About Helen Keller

Anne Sullivan Macy

Anne Sullivan (1866-1936) had a

difficult childhood. Her parents were

poor Irish immigrants. Her mother

died when she was very young.

When she was 5 years old, a

disease damaged her sight. Then her

father took 10-year-old Anne and her

younger brother Jimmy to an

orphanage and abandoned them.

Her brother died there. Anne stayed

until she was about 14.

She was sent to a famous school,

the Perkins School for the Blind,

where she got top grades.

When she was 21, she began

teaching Helen Keller. Not only did

she change Helen’s life, but the

methods she invented to teach the

deaf and blind are still used today.

When she was older, she married.

She, her husband, John, and Helen

lived in the same house for many

years.

Until Anne Sullivan died, she

stayed with Helen, helping her.

photos courtesy American Foundation for the Blind

Helen Keller loved outdoor activities.

Here the 38-year-old Helen is riding a

horse in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Amazing achievements

Helen wrote her autobiography,

“The Story of My Life,” when she

was just 23, and it was

later translated into 50

languages. To write,

Helen wrote on a braille

typewriter and then retyped

her work on a regular typewriter.

Throughout her life she traveled,

speaking and raising money for good

causes such as the American Foundation

for the Blind, women’s right to vote,

peace and ending poverty.

Anne Sullivan taught Helen to experience

nature by touch and smell. They had

many of their classes outdoors. All of her

life, Helen loved nature.

Look through your newspaper for stories

about people who are achieving great

things.

The writer Mark Twain called Anne

Sullivan (right) “the miracle worker.” In

this photo, Hout

sandhill cranes.

Read the story

of Helen Keller

by Betty Debnam

Appearing in your

newspaper on ____________.

from The Mini Page by Betty Debnam

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

release dates: March 6-12 11-5 (04)

used in place of ad if desired.)

Please include all of the appropriate registered trademark symbols and copyright lines in any publication of The Mini Page®.

Supersport: Sanya Richards

Height: 5-8 Weight: 120

Hometown: Pembroke Pines, Fla.

The “S” in Sanya Richards’ name could stand

for “speed.” The University of Texas sophomore

looks like a blur on a track. She won the 400-

meter gold medal in the U.S. championships in

2003 and anchored a gold-medal-winning 400-

meter relay team at the world championships.

In 2002, Richards was named Verizon Youth Athlete of the

Year.

Richards, who was born in Jamaica, also played basketball

in high school and had a perfect 4.0 grade-point average. At

Texas, the “Gold Girl” is majoring in engineering – and

winning races.

promoting Issue 11.)

Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Standards Spotlight:

The Story of Helen Keller

Mini Page activities meet many state and national educational standards. Each

week we identify standards that relate to The Mini Page’s content and offer

activities that will help your students reach them.

This week’s standards:

• Students use biographies and stories to understand the individuals who are honored by

the nation. (Social Studies: History)

• Students explore factors that contribute to one’s personal identify, such as interests,

capabilities and perceptions. (Social Studies: Individual development)

Activities:

1. Divide a piece of paper into four sections. At the top of one section write “Friends.” At

the top of the other sections, write the words “Travel,” “Fun” and “Studies.” Write a

sentence about Helen Keller in each of the sections. For example, in the “Travel” section,

write something about her travels. In the “Studies” section, write a sentence about what

she studied and learned.

2. Talk to several friends or family members. Ask them to tell you something they like to

look at in nature. Ask them to name a sound they like to hear. (Ask them not to name

pictures and sounds from television or recordings.)

3. List three qualities you admire in Anne Sullivan. Write a sentence for each one

explaining how you think that quality helped her.

4. Look in the newspaper to find people who share some of Helen Keller’s interests and

abilities. Find someone who (a) travels a lot, (b) is a writer, (c) loves nature, (d) helps

others and (e) knows the president.

5. Think about a special teacher you’ve had. Write a paragraph describing that teacher and

explaining why you think he/she deserves special recognition.

(standards by Dr. Sherrye D. Garrett, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi)

(Note to Editor: Above is the Standards for Issue 11.)

More than thirty years after her death, Helen Keller is still known internationally as

the little deaf blind girl, the ‘miracle child’ who triumphed over adversity. But

behind the image, hidden from the public gaze, was a flesh-and-blood woman,

writer and radical activist, suffragette and Socialist. She was a woman who lived to

old age, yet is fixed in the public imagination as an eternal child.

This paper charts the creation of Keller’s popular image and enduring iconic status,

analysing their purpose and the implications they hold for us as disabled people. It

then examines the truth of her life, revealing how contemporary are the issues

which determined it. Finally, it explores the value of retelling her biography and the

relevance it holds in the building of disability culture.

Biographical details

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 1

Liz Crow is a writer, broadcaster and disability activist. She is co-producer/director,

with Ann Pugh, of The Real Helen Keller for Channel Four Television.

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 2

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon

Helen Keller was like a ‘kitchen word’. It was as if she were always in the

realm of my consciousness. (Marcous, 1999a)

I have a memory of school assembly, many years ago - the theme: heroes through

time.

We sat there, cross-legged, 150 children in the big school hall, everyone praying

for Helen Keller and all the Helen Kellers of the world, and that we might live our

own lives with the same strength and fortitude. Perhaps we watched The Miracle

Worker, because quarter of a century later there is still a scene from the film

etched in my mind: the child Helen with her teacher, high drama by the water

pump, that moment when deaf and blind Helen discovers language and a ‘miracle’

occurs.

I have a memory, too, of an instinctive resistance to what we were being told. Still

a non-disabled child, this was a figure outside my experience. Soon to become a

disabled child, she was a figure beyond my grasp. Either way, she was set up as

something I should strive towards, however unwillingly, but at which I would most

certainly fail. As I grew older, for the most part I could dismiss her from my mind.

But, when others expected me to be inspired, I would decry her.

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 3

And then, in adulthood, I read a book about women anti-militarists (Oldfield, 1989).

I learned of Sophie Scholl’s resistance work in the Germany of World War II, of the

essays of Simone Weil and the awakening of Christa Wolf to the Nazism of her

childhood. And amongst them I found the name of Helen Keller – so different from

the Helen Keller of my school days that I took convincing that this was the same

person. In place of some pale icon, here she was flesh-and-blood, a writer and

radical activist, suffragette and Socialist. All those years before, I had been taught,

not of Helen Keller, but of an image of Helen Keller. I began to read wider, tracking

down her own words, finding out what she was really like, trying to understand this

gulf between the fiction and fact of her life.

What I have learned has left me wanting to tell the truth of her life. But I also want

to look at the origins and reasons for its fiction. It is not simply the events of her life

that have kept me focused, it is that the issues which influenced and determined

them are those which still occupy disability activists today. I am intrigued by the

connection that her life offers to our past, the lessons that we can learn from

looking back and the assurance that, however tentatively, we are making progress.

In this paper I will:

• Describe the creation of her popular and enduring image – her elevation from

human being to icon

• Analyse its purpose and the implications it holds for us as disabled people

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 4

• Examine the ‘truth’ – and show how contemporary are the issues which shaped

her life

• Explore the idea of rethinking icons, bringing their stories into a culture of

disability.

Creating an Image

“Most people know of Helen Keller as a disabled seven year old in the grips of

an oblivion of no sight, no sound, rescued by an incredible teacher at a well at

the age of seven, brought out of that oblivion through language …and then it

disappears from people’s minds.” (Bergmann, 1999)

Helen Keller was born in 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the first child of Captain

Arthur Keller and his second wife Kate. Theirs was a genteel Southern military

family that had been made poor by the civil war of fifteen years before.

At 19 months, after a brief illness, Helen became deaf and blind. The reactions of

her family were mixed. The family struggled to communicate with each other and

Helen became increasingly “wild and destructive”. Her uncle wanted her shut

away in an institution for being “defective and not very pleasant to see” (Keller,

1903). In the late nineteenth century, this was the fate of many disabled children,

most of whom subsequently died.

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 5

However, her aunt was convinced that “this child has more sense than all the

Kellers - if there is any way to reach her mind”. That Helen was already exercising

freewill is absent from the popular image, yet she had by now begun to devise her

own basic signs, permitting the family rudimentary communication.

Her family’s desire to find a way at least to discipline Helen and control her

tantrums led them to Alexander Graham Bell, the great inventor, who was also well

known for his work with deaf people. The controversial nature of this work never

appears in the fiction of Helen Keller, although it would soon exert a fundamental

influence on the course of her life. At their first meeting, Bell suggested they

approach Perkins School for the Blind in Boston to find a teacher. It was there that

Anne Sullivan, a recent graduate of the school, was recommended for the job.

Annie travelled down to Alabama to work with Helen. She believed intuitively that

a child would learn best when the process was enjoyable and, set against the

Victorian education system, her teaching was progressive and inspired. She used

the deaf blind manual alphabet and spelt words constantly into the palm of Helen’s

hand. For several months this was a game to Helen, with no inherent meaning,

until one day, at the water pump, a single event occurred which would instantly be

turned into mythical status:

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 upon the

motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 6

forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language

was revealed to me. (Keller, 1903)

This was the ‘miracle’ that would for ever after define the image of Helen Keller.

“She was transformed from this semi-wild child into this saint-like child, this

angel child. She was groomed to play a part.” (Herrmann, 1999)

Once she had discovered language and learning, Helen revelled in it. She was

very bright and learned at a phenomenal pace. Annie recorded her learning in

detailed letters to Michael Anagnos, the director of Perkins School. At a time when

relatively few deaf blind children even survived, the fact that a deaf blind child

could be educable was a revelation. Anagnos alerted the press and the story of

the ‘miracle child’ was born. Within weeks Helen was world famous.

Throughout her childhood, the desire of the press and public to follow her every

move was feverish. Wild stories were spread about her amazing achievements:

her ability to identify colours by touch, her fluency in seven languages by the age of

ten, her singing and her brilliant piano playing. The language used was

extravagant:

“She was a miracle child, she had sprung fully grown from the forehead like

Athena, she was brilliant, she was innocent, she was a natural wonder, she

was a genius – the word miracle occurs again and again.” (Klages, 1999)

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 7

Helen was visited by famous people, written about by the literati and examined by

philosophers and scientists (who found, her mind and her senses to be remarkably

like those of other people). Her likes, her sayings and her foibles, her kindnesses

to others were all catalogued in detail and read voraciously.

Financed by philanthropists, Helen’s education continued. Soon she had learned

to write using a stylus and, by the age of eleven, to lip read and speak. The image

of Helen Keller does not question her means of communication, although many

deaf people have done so ever since.

Although at the time of Helen’s birth, sign language was well established in the

United States, her education coincided with the new oralism movement (Baynton,

1996). This argued that deaf children should be taught to lip read and speak.

Helen had met Alexander Graham Bell, who was a leading figure for the oralism

campaign, before she had acquired language and at a time when her family was

desperate for answers. His advice was trusted and unquestioned.

When Helen was introduced to communication and language through the deaf

blind manual alphabet, it was used as a tool by which to ‘break through’ to her.

The intention was never to facilitate her connection with other deaf people. When

Bell referred her to Perkins School for the Blind, she was presented with lipreading

and speech as the only valid means of communication. The manual alphabet

became a secondary communication method, a back up to speech and lipreading,

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 8

and her segregation from other deaf people was reinforced. Her early schooling

set her firmly on the path of oralism so that even when she later attended a school

for deaf children, the Wright-Humason School in New York was selected

specifically for its innovations in oralism.

From early childhood, Helen knew that she wanted to spend her life working to

improve social conditions. To do so, she must be able to communicate effectively.

Sign language, a predominantly visual (as opposed to tactile) language, was not

readily available to her and the deaf blind manual alphabet ( which entails spelling

each word letter-by-letter) made communication very slow. The most effective

route that Helen knew for her ideas to reach people was speaking. She “labored

night and day” and was delighted in her achievement, but “discouragement and

weariness cast me down frequently” (Keller, 1903). Helen could never speak

clearly enough to be understood by strangers and, in life-long regret, believed

herself to have failed.

At eighteen, she passed her entrance exams to Radcliffe, the leading women’s

college of the time. Radcliffe admitted Helen, but grudgingly:

When the word became public there was much talk – ‘Why don’t they say

outright that Miss Sullivan is entering Radcliffe instead of Helen Keller a blind,

deaf and dumb girl?’ (Lash, 1980)

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 9

Very few staff or students made real effort to communicate with her. Books were

rarely provided in Braille, classes were laboriously finger-spelled by Annie and

Helen spent each night typing up the day’s lectures from memory. Helen was the

first deaf blind college student in the United States – and the last for half a century.

In the public image, her education was a triumph; in reality she struggled

throughout, remembering her college years as times of deep loneliness and

exclusion.

In adulthood, the child of purity became the woman of virtue. In her middle years,

Helen worked as fundraiser and ambassador with the newly established American

Foundation for the Blind (AFB). She still attracted the press who cast her as an

international figurehead for blind people. But the public image omits her scepticism

about charity and her loathing of asking for money:

“She didn’t like doing it, she felt like she was begging. I think she felt it was a

step backwards in the evolution of being a blind person, to find herself there on

a stage asking for money, even though she was not asking for money for

herself. I think she perceived it as something that was needed and she was

willing to do it because she believed in the cause.” (Kleege, 1999)

She conceded to working within the AFB and the system with great reluctance,

believing it was the best means for her to be effective. However, the image does

not record her growing frustration and increasingly volatile relationship with an

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 10

organisation which, initially at the vanguard, became increasingly establishment

over time.

The biggest omissions, however, from the popular image of Helen Keller concern

her political activism and her personal life.

During her college days, Helen was introduced to socialism by the lecturer and

journalist John Macy (who later married Annie). She recognised “a struggle which

resembles my own” and rapidly moved from an intellectual commitment into

lifelong and revolutionary activism.

The saint was in actuality a spitfire, and her rhetoric was forceful and furious.

(Fillippeli, 1985)

Helen joined the Socialist Party, subsequently leaving it for the more radical

Industrial Workers of the World. Her political involvements were many and varied,

carried out with resoluteness. She campaigned for birth control, supported civil

rights for black people, defended militant women’s suffrage, campaigned with

leading pacifists against the United States’ preparations for war, protested at the

deportation of immigrants for their political beliefs, co-founded the American Civil

Liberties Union. For Helen, the root of all these campaigns lay in a fundamental

drive for justice and social equality and she exhorted others to join the struggle.

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 11

Many young women full of devotion and good-will have been engaged in

superficial charities. They have tried to feed the hungry without knowing the

causes of poverty. They have tried to minister to the sick without

understanding the cause of disease. They have tried to raise up fallen sisters

without understanding the brutal arm of necessity that struck them down… We

attempt social reforms where we need social transformations. We mend small

things and leave the great things untouched. (Keller, 1913)

No one has given me a good reason why we should obey unjust laws. But the

reason why we should resist them is obvious… The dignity of human nature

compels us to resist what we believe to be wrong. (Keller, 1914)

In 1933, her book of political essays was burned by the Nazis. From the 1930s

and throughout the tide of anti-Communism into the 1950s, to the great dismay of

the American Foundation for the Blind, she was kept under surveillance by the FBI

for her far-left politics and support of Communism. She took risks that saw other

people jailed or socially dispossessed and, particularly during her early civil rights

work, “her politics for anyone else might have gotten her lynched” (Fillippeli, 1999).

Early on, she publicly linked her work on women’s suffrage and anti-poverty with

the rights of blind people.

The way to help the blind or any other defective class is to understand, correct,

remove the incapacities and inequalities of our entire civilization. (Keller, 1913)

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 12

A class of college girls…asked me to initiate them into philanthropic endeavor

for the sightless. I told them to study the life that swarms at their very doors…

that the best educated human is the one who understands most about the life

in which he is placed… They asked me how to help the blind… I gravely

recommended that they study Industrial Economics. (Keller, 1913)

To most people, her disability rights work appeared to be in keeping with the saintly

public image, so that they were open to her ideas without realising how radical they

could be. In Israel, when her hosts showed her with great pride a village for blind

people, Helen argued vehemently against segregation and convinced them to

break up the village. Long before the social model of disability had a name, she

publicised the link between social and economic conditions and impairment, as

well as grasping the impact of multiple oppression. Within the American

Foundation for the Blind and the legislature, she lobbied continuously to include the

particular needs of deaf blind people and of black disabled people.

As part of her bid to bring her political beliefs to a wider audience, Helen

(misguidedly) took up an offer from Hollywood in 1920 to star in Deliverance, a

silent movie of her life. The producer realised early on that the saccharine image

alone would not hold audiences. To sell the film, he spiced it up with a lover. For

the public image of Helen Keller, this was the sole admission of Helen as sexual,

but the concession was only partial. In the film, her love is unrequited and so pure

that the idol has fallen for Ulysses, a mythical being like herself.

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 13

The public image does not permit her a real personal life. Yet just two years before

Hollywood’s fiction, she had fallen in love with her secretary Peter Fagan and the

two had taken out a marriage licence in secret. The press broke the news and

Helen’s family whisked her back to Alabama, banishing her lover at gunpoint. Her

family could not countenance the reality of Helen’s adulthood and nor could the

image incorporate her as sexual: “for anyone as pure as Helen is, she would be so

sullied by actual sexuality that it could just never happen” (Finger, 1999).

The public image cannot incorporate a Helen Keller that is human and so the

largest part of her life - her greatest accomplishments and her great tragedy – is

missing from the public account.

The final event associated with Helen Keller was her funeral, held in 1968. She

had left instructions for a simple, intimate funeral, in keeping with her chosen

Swedenborgian religion. However, her wishes did not fit the image of Helen Keller

and so they were ignored by her family and her trustees at the American

Foundation for the Blind. Instead, these keepers of the image conducted a large

public service, with full honours and interment at the National Cathedral in

Washington DC, so that “even in death, she wasn’t free, her image wasn’t free”

(Fillippeli, 1999).

The abiding image of Helen Keller is reinforced in the last major public document of

her life. The Unconquered is a film biography made in 1953 towards the end of her

public life. It recounts the water pump story, the charity work, the great achiever,

Helen Keller: Rethinking the Problematic Icon 14

the icon, and shows scenes of domesticity – flower arranging and washing up. It

omits all departures from the image and leaves the audience with a picture of

Helen now, a mild, docile old lady who once inspired the world.

But in the popular imagination, it is the childhood image that persists. On the

internet, a school project posted recently by an eleven year old charts the events of

Helen Keller’s life. A timeline begins with her birth, notes her illness in 1882, tells

us “Annie came to teach Helen how to behave”. In 1890, she learns to speak,

followed by her school days and on to 1900: “Helen’s first day at college”. A

chronological gap gives way to the next event, in 1968: “Helen died”.

Helen Keller is ‘the little blind girl who overcame adversity to symbolize the triumph

of the individual’ (Fillippeli, 1999). She was a woman who lived to old age, yet is

fixed in the public imagination as an eternal child. Situated alongside Heidi’s Little

Clara and Beth in Little Women, she enjoins us to be better than ourselves and

rivals the very essence of fiction.