Helen Keller Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

When she was 19 months old, an illness (possibly scarlet fever or meningitis), left her deaf, blind, and unable to speak. In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens American Notes of the successful education of another deaf and blind woman, Laura Bridgman, dispatched Helen, accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice. He subsequently put them in touch

with Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston.
Helen Keller pictured as a child in 1888 with Anne Sullivan

Michael Anaganos, the school's director, asked former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship,

Sullivan evolving into her teacher and then eventual companion. Anne 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 doll. Keller's big 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. 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. Today she is remembered as a campaigner for the rights of the disabled, womens suffrage and the availability of birth control. She also wrote extensively about her perception of her world. About her deafness she wrote in later life: "I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus-- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man if I could live again I should do much more than I have for the deaf. I have found deafness to be a much greater handicap than blindness " "Blindness separates us from things but deafness separates us from people.
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From a letter to Dr. J Kerr Love, March 31 , 1910.

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She wrote beautifully about her ability to perceive music. She was able to hold a radio and follow the individual instruments in an orchestral concert, feeling the vibrations. She once described hearing the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso sing by holding her fingers against his lips and throat. She always felt that her remaining senses were heightened. Perhaps you could argue that she would be unable to make a comparison between her own senses and those of other people, as she would have been unable to remember a time before she was deaf and blind, or you might feel intuitively that you are bound to make better use of your remaining senses if you are deprived of one or more of them. For instance, of her sense of smell, she remarked that simply by smelling people she could decipher: the work they are engaged in. The odors of wood, iron, paint, and drugs cling to the garments of those that work in them. Thus I can distinguish the carpenter from the ironworker, the artist from the mason or the chemist. When a person passes quickly from one place to another I get a scent impression of where he has been, the kitchen, the 2 garden, or the sick-room.

She is often depicted today as a kind of saint, who overcame incredible adversity to work tirelessly for the disenfranchised. However, she, herself, realized that without the benefits of a rich and loving family she "I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment I have learned 2 that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone."

Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home. She 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 service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and her ashes were placed there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.

Guiding Questions 1. Do you agree with Helen Keller that some human senses are more indispensible than others? 2. Do you believe that the other senses are heightened in people who lose one or more? 3. Do our assumptions about those with disabilities affect our behavior towards them? Do you think this affects our interpretation of the message of Helen Kellers writings? 4. Can you put yourself in the position of somebody like Helen Keller and really understand her perception of the world around her?

From the book: Helen Keller. The World I live in.