A VINTAGE ORIGINAL 8X10 INCH PHOTO OF HELEN KELLER NEAR A HELEN KELLER KLM DOUGLAS AIRPLANE FROM 1955. Newspaperman, Correspondent, Author, Photographer, Hobbyist. Born February 27, 1903, Illinois. Died March 17, 1999, Illinois. Grover Brinkman was a man of many interests and talents. With his wife, he owned and operated a small-town newspaper for two decades, and he served as a correspondent for a national news agency. His stories and articles were printed in newspapers throughout the Midwest and in magazines as varied as Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Boys’ Life, Mother Earth News, and the scholarly journal Environment. He snapped a famous photograph of a tornado and documented its aftermath for Life magazine. Brinkman even had his gadgets and inventions highlighted in Popular Mechanics over the course of a couple of decades. By all indications, he was an irrepressible force. Grover Brinkman was born on February 27, 1903, in Illinois. His father owned a soda manufacturing plant in Okawville, a small town in the southern part of the state, now home of the last remaining mineral springs resort in Illinois. He later said, I wanted to be a writer all my life. Brinkman’s only formal training came from business program at Belleville Commercial College. Brinkman married at twenty-two and at about the same time acquired his hometown paper, the Okawville Times. The Okawville Times is still in operation and still in the Stricker family. Brinkman was a writer for life. In addition to writing and taking pictures for the newspaper, he was employed as a correspondent for the Central Press Association. His articles appeared in papers throughout the Midwest, including the Chicago Tribune. On March 15, 1938, he was Johnny-on-the-spot when tornados tore through his home state. He photographed an approaching funnel cloud from a quarter-mile away, narrowly escaping with his life. Life, which printed the photo in its April issue, called him “the most successful” of lensmen to have snapped pictures of the first tornados of the season. As I write this, Illinois is once again recovering from March whirlwinds. Grover Brinkman wrote one story for Weird Tales and was one of a number of newspapermen to write for the magazine during its very early days. His story was called “The Hour of Death, ” and it appeared in the December 1925 issue. Brinkman’s other genre fiction was mostly in the field of mystery and detective stories. He wore out the markets in writing for Action Stories, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Dime Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Guilty Detective Story Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Off Beat Detective Stories, Super-Detective, Terror Detective Story Magazine, Trapped Detective Story Magazine, Two-Fisted Detective Stories, and Web Detective Stories. Brinkman also authored at least two books, Grover Brinkman’s Southern Illinois and Night of the Blood Moon (1976). “That way, ” he said, I get a check or a rejection slip every day. As a youngster, Brinkman lived in Plum Hill, Illinois. After many years in Okawville, Brinkman moved to Columbia, Illinois. Even at age ninety, he had no plans to retire. “I want to be the George Burns of journalism, ” he said. Grover Brinkman lived to the advanced age of ninety-six (only four years fewer than Burns) and died on March 17, 1999, in Illinois. 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. 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. [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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. [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. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, was made famous by Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life, and its adaptations for film and stage, The Miracle Worker. Her June 27 birthday is commemorated as Helen Keller Day in Pennsylvania and, in the centenary year of her birth, was recognized by a presidential proclamation from US President Jimmy Carter. She was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 1971 and was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015. Early childhood and illness. Example of her lectures. Helen Keller birthplace in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Keller with Anne Sullivan vacationing on Cape Cod in July 1888. Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. [3] Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green, [1] that Helen’s grandfather had built decades earlier. [4] She had four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson and Phillip Brooks Keller, and two older half-brothers from her father’s prior marriage, James McDonald Keller and William Simpson Keller. [3][4] The family were part of the slaveholding elite before the war, but lost status later. [9][10] One of Helen’s Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller reflected on this irony 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. At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as “an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain”, [11] which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. [3][12] The illness left her both deaf and blind. She lived, as she recalled in her autobiography, “at sea in a dense fog”. At that time, Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the two-years older daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs;[14]:11 by the age of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by the vibration of their footsteps. 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. Chisholm referred the Kellers to Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Michael Anagnos, the school’s director, asked a 20-year-old alumna of the school, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, to become Keller’s instructor. It was the beginning of a nearly 50-year-long relationship during which Sullivan evolved into Keller’s governess and eventually her companion. Sullivan arrived at Keller’s house on March 5, 1887, a day Keller would forever remember as my soul’s birthday. [13] Sullivan 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. When Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for “mug”, Keller became so frustrated she broke the mug. [17] But soon she began imitating Sullivan’s hand gestures. “I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed, ” Keller remembered. I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. 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”. Writing in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Keller recalled the moment: I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon 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. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free! [13] Keller 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. In May 1888, Keller started attending the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa[21] from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 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 using the Tadoma method, which means using her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker[citation needed]-her sense of touch had heightened. She became proficient at using braille[23] and reading sign language with her hands[citation needed] as well. 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. 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. Helen Keller in 1899 with lifelong companion and teacher Anne Sullivan. Polly Thomson (February 20, 1885[26] – March 21, 1960) was hired to keep house. 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. [28] 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. “[29] He was the fingerspelling socialist[4] “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. Keller had moved with her mother in Montgomery, Alabama. Anne Sullivan died in 1936, with Keller holding her hand, [30]:255 after falling into a coma as a result of coronary thrombosis. [31]:266 Keller and Thomson moved to Connecticut. Winnie Corbally, a nurse originally hired to care for Thomson in 1957, stayed on after Thomson’s death and was Keller’s companion for the rest of her life. Helen Keller portrait, 1904. The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all… Helen Keller, 1911[32]. Part of a series on. Flag of the United States. Svg United States portal. Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. The deaf community was widely impacted by her. [33] She was a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, birth control supporter, and opponent of Woodrow Wilson. In 1915, she and George A. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health, and nutrition. [4] In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Keller and Twain were both considered political radicals allied with leftist politics. 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; in addition, she supported causes that opposed military intervention. [35] She had speech therapy in order to have her voice heard better by the public. [31] She supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. [36] 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”. 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. 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”. In Why I Became an IWW, [39] 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. 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. [40][41] Keller also expressed concerns about human overpopulation. [42][43]unreliable source? Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles. At age 22, Keller published her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), with help from Sullivan and Sullivan’s husband, John Macy. [44] Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913. Her spiritual autobiography, My Religion, [48] 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 theologian and mystic who gave a spiritual interpretation of the teachings of the Bible and who claimed that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ had already taken place. Keller described the core 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. Keller visited 35 countries from 1946 to 1957. In 1948 she went to New Zealand and visited deaf schools in Christchurch and Auckland. She met Deaf Society of Canterbury Life Member Patty Still in Christchurch. Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home. On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She was buried at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D. “Anne Sullivan – Helen Keller Memorial”-a bronze sculpture in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Keller’s life has been interpreted many times. She was also the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated by her friend and noted theatrical actress Katharine Cornell. She was also profiled in The Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced by Hearst Entertainment. The common title of the cycle echoes Mark Twain’s description of Sullivan as a “miracle worker”. Helen Keller with Patty Duke, who portrayed Keller in both the play and film The Miracle Worker (1962). In a 1979 remake, Patty Duke played Anne Sullivan. [53] This film, a semi-sequel to The Miracle Worker, recounts her college years and her early adult life. A documentary called Shining Soul: Helen Keller’s Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced by the Swedenborg Foundation in the same year. 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. [56] Depicting Helen holding one of her many dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne Sullivan Macy. Video footage showing Helen Keller learning to mimic speech sounds also exists. A biography of Helen Keller was written by the German Jewish author Hildegard Johanna Kaeser. A 10-by-7-foot (3.0 by 2.1 m) painting titled The Advocate: Tribute to Helen Keller was created by three artists from Kerala, India 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 an. American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century’s leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU. Who Was Helen Keller? Helen Keller was an American educator, advocate for the blind and deaf and co-founder of the ACLU. Stricken by an illness at the age of 2, Keller was left blind and deaf. Beginning in 1887, Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, helped her make tremendous progress with her ability to communicate, and Keller went on to college, graduating in 1904. During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments. Early Life and Family. Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Keller was the first of two daughters born to Arthur H. Keller and Katherine Adams Keller. Keller’s father had served as an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. She also had two older stepbrothers. The family was not particularly wealthy and earned income from their cotton plantation. Later, Arthur became the editor of a weekly local newspaper, the North Alabamian. Keller was born with her senses of sight and hearing, and started speaking when she was just 6 months old. She started walking at the age of 1. Loss of Sight and Hearing. Keller lost both her sight and hearing at just 19 months old. In 1882, she contracted an illness – called “brain fever” by the family doctor – that produced a high body temperature. The true nature of the illness remains a mystery today, though some experts believe it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Within a few days after the fever broke, Keller’s mother noticed that her daughter didn’t show any reaction when the dinner bell was rung, or when a hand was waved in front of her face. As Keller grew into childhood, she developed a limited method of communication with her companion, Martha Washington, the young daughter of the family cook. The two had created a type of sign language. By the time Keller was 7, they had invented more than 60 signs to communicate with each other. During this time, Keller had also become very wild and unruly. She would kick and scream when angry, and giggle uncontrollably when happy. She tormented Martha and inflicted raging tantrums on her parents. Many family relatives felt she should be institutionalized. Keller’s Teacher, Anne Sullivan. Keller worked with her teacher Anne Sullivan for 49 years, from 1887 until Sullivan’s death in 1936. In 1932, Sullivan experienced health problems and lost her eyesight completely. A young woman named Polly Thomson, who had begun working as a secretary for Keller and Sullivan in 1914, became Keller’s constant companion upon Sullivan’s death. Looking for answers and inspiration, Keller’s mother came across a travelogue by Charles Dickens, American Notes, in 1886. She read of the successful education of another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman, and soon dispatched Keller and her father to Baltimore, Maryland to see specialist Dr. After examining Keller, Chisolm recommended that she see Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell met with Keller and her parents, and suggested that they travel to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts. Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan in July 1888. Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan in 1888. Spencer Family, New England Historic Genealogical Society [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. There, the family met with the school’s director, Michael Anaganos. He suggested Keller work with one of the institute’s most recent graduates, Sullivan. On March 3, 1887, Sullivan went to Keller’s home in Alabama and immediately went to work. She began by teaching six-year-old Keller finger spelling, starting with the word “doll, ” to help Keller understand the gift of a doll she had brought along. Other words would follow. At first, Keller was curious, then defiant, refusing to cooperate with Sullivan’s instruction. When Keller did cooperate, Sullivan could tell that she wasn’t making the connection between the objects and the letters spelled out in her hand. Sullivan kept working at it, forcing Keller to go through the regimen. As Keller’s frustration grew, the tantrums increased. Finally, Sullivan demanded that she and Keller be isolated from the rest of the family for a time, so that Keller could concentrate only on Sullivan’s instruction. They moved to a cottage on the plantation. In a dramatic struggle, Sullivan taught Keller the word “water”; she helped her make the connection between the object and the letters by taking Keller out to the water pump, and placing Keller’s hand under the spout. While Sullivan moved the lever to flush cool water over Keller’s hand, she spelled out the word w-a-t-e-r on Keller’s other hand. Keller understood and repeated the word in Sullivan’s hand. She then pounded the ground, demanding to know its letter name. Sullivan followed her, spelling out the word into her hand. Keller moved to other objects with Sullivan in tow. By nightfall, she had learned 30 words. In 1905, Sullivan married John Macy, an instructor at Harvard University, a social critic and a prominent socialist. After the marriage, Sullivan continued to be Keller’s guide and mentor. When Keller went to live with the Macys, they both initially gave Keller their undivided attention. Gradually, however, Anne and John became distant to each other, as Anne’s devotion to Keller continued unabated. After several years, the couple separated, though were never divorced. In 1890, Keller began speech classes at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston. She would toil for 25 years to learn to speak so that others could understand her. From 1894 to 1896, Keller attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City. There, she worked on improving her communication skills and studied regular academic subjects. Around this time, Keller became determined to attend college. In 1896, she attended the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, a preparatory school for women. As her story became known to the general public, Keller began to meet famous and influential people. One of them was the writer Mark Twain, who was very impressed with her. Twain introduced her to his friend Henry H. Rogers, a Standard Oil executive. Rogers was so impressed with Keller’s talent, drive and determination that he agreed to pay for her to attend Radcliffe College. There, she was accompanied by Sullivan, who sat by her side to interpret lectures and texts. By this time, Keller had mastered several methods of communication, including touch-lip reading, Braille, speech, typing and finger-spelling. Keller graduated, cum laude, from Radcliffe College in 1904, at the age of 24. DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY’S HELEN KELLER FACT CARD. Helen Keller Fact Card. The Story of My Life. With the help of Sullivan and Macy, Sullivan’s future husband, Keller wrote her first book, The Story of My Life. Published in 1905, the memoirs covered Keller’s transformation from childhood to 21-year-old college student. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Keller tackled social and political issues, including women’s suffrage, pacifism, birth control and socialism. After college, Keller set out to learn more about the world and how she could help improve the lives of others. News of her story spread beyond Massachusetts and New England. Keller became a well-known celebrity and lecturer by sharing her experiences with audiences, and working on behalf of others living with disabilities. She testified before Congress, strongly advocating to improve the welfare of blind people. In 1915, along with renowned city planner George Kessler, she co-founded Helen Keller International to combat the causes and consequences of blindness and malnutrition. In 1920, she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. When the American Federation for the Blind was established in 1921, Keller had an effective national outlet for her efforts. She also joined other organizations dedicated to helping those less fortunate, including the Permanent Blind War Relief Fund (later called the American Braille Press). Soon after she graduated from college, Keller became a member of the Socialist Party, most likely due in part to her friendship with John Macy. Between 1909 and 1921, she wrote several articles about socialism and supported Eugene Debs, a Socialist Party presidential candidate. Her series of essays on socialism, entitled “Out of the Dark, ” described her views on socialism and world affairs. It was during this time that Keller first experienced public prejudice about her disabilities. For most of her life, the press had been overwhelmingly supportive of her, praising her courage and intelligence. But after she expressed her socialist views, some criticized her by calling attention to her disabilities. One newspaper, the Brooklyn Eagle, wrote that her mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development. In 1946, Keller was appointed counselor of international relations for the American Foundation of Overseas Blind. Between 1946 and 1957, she traveled to 35 countries on five continents. In 1955, at age 75, Keller embarked on the longest and most grueling trip of her life: a 40,000-mile, five-month trek across Asia. Through her many speeches and appearances, she brought inspiration and encouragement to millions of people. The Miracle Worker’ Movie. Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life, was used as the basis for 1957 television drama The Miracle Worker. In 1959, the story was developed into a Broadway play of the same title, starring Patty Duke as Keller and Anne Bancroft as Sullivan. The two actresses also performed those roles in the 1962 award-winning film version of the play. During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments, including the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1936, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, and election to the Women’s Hall of Fame in 1965. Keller also 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 named an Honorary Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland. Keller died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, just a few weeks before her 88th birthday. Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the remaining years of her life at her home in Connecticut. This item is in the category “Collectibles\Photographic Images\Photographs”. The seller is “memorabilia111″ and is located in this country: US. 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• Region of Origin: US
• Framing: Unframed
• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
• Listed By: Dealer or Reseller
• Date of Creation: 1950-1959
• Color: Black & White
• Signed: No
• Original/Reprint: Original Print
• Antique: No
• Type: Photograph