ANNE AND HELEN | Helen Keller

Growing up with "Teacher"

At the age of six, Helen Keller met Anne Sullivan through Alexander Graham Bell. Anne was a twenty year old graduate from the Perkins Institute in Washington D.C. On March 3, 1887, Helen and Anne began their life long friendship. Anne moved to Tuscumbia, Alabama all the way from Washington, D.C to work with Helen. It was very difficult at first for Anne to teach Helen to finger spell with Helen's violent behavior added. When the behavior continued to get gradually worse, Anne and Helen moved into a small cottage on the same land as her family's house.

Before long, her behavior improved and she began to learn to grasp the concept of putting the 'finger-spelled' words together with their meaning. The first of these words that Helen said was on April 5, 1887 which was 'water.' Anne took her to a water pump outside of their house and put Helen's hand under the running water while spelling out the word on her hand. After repetitive practice, Helen knew the word. In Helen's Autobiography she recounted the water pump incident:

"We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with

which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the

spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first

slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed 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."

Throughout the rest of that afternoon, Helen learned the spelling of thirty new words, even Anne's name. When Helen asked Anne for her name, she spelled 'Teacher' on Helen's hand. From that moment on, Helen referred to Anne by that name.

Even though she did not like her voice, Keller was able to learn how to speak at the age of ten through attending the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Boston. At the age of eleven, she wrote a fairy tale story and was accused of plagiarism because of the amount of details that were included in the book; no one believed that those were her own thoughts, especially since her and Anne Sullivan were so close. However, Alexander Graham Bell and Mark Twain both defended the accusations of plagiarism. Twain even quoting: “The two most interesting characters of the 19th Century are Napoleon and Helen Keller."

As Keller grew up, she was able to communicate in a variety of different ways, including tough-lip reading, Braille, speech, typing, and finger-spelling. She was very determined to be able to live a successful life and expressed her desire to go to college. In 1896, she was accepted into the Cambridge School for Young Ladies. Mark Twain introduced her to Henry Rogers, who was fascinated with her story; he agreed to pay for her to be transferred to Radcliffe College in 1900. Helen and Anne traveled everywhere with each other, so throughout Helen's entire college career, Sullivan was right beside her interpreting lectures and books. She also helped Helen stay motivated and determined to do the best she could, especially when professors told her that she needed to take an easier course load. She did not listen because she wanted to 'be just like everyone else' and on June 28, 1904 , Helen became the first deaf and blind woman to graduate college. Not only did she graduate, but she did so with cum laude, meaning ‘with honor.'

While at Radcliffe College, Helen and Anne met John Albert Macy who helped edit Helen's first book, "The Story of My Life," which was published in 1903. Two years later in May 3, 1905, John and Anne got married; the three lived together in Wrentham, Massachusetts where Helen wrote many more of her books including "The World I Live In" and "Out of the Dark." "The World I Live In" reveals Helen's first thoughts as a young child after becoming deaf and blind, while "Out of the Dark" is a series of essays on socialism and her political views. Helen, Anne, and John continued to work together and John even learned Braille to assist Helen. However, in 1914, Anne Sullivan and John Macy's relationship began to disintegrate and they separated but never officially divorced.

After graduating from Radcliffe, Helen and Anne continued their friendship and began to travel the world advocating for those being deaf and blind. Most of their career was spent primarily with concentrating on the blind though, the reason was believed to be because Helen wanted to give 100% effort to one or the other. By activating for both, Helen believed she would not have been able to accomplish as much.

In 1915, Polly Thompson began working with Anne and Helen to provide more support. The three were considered the 'Three musketeers' and did everything together. In 1922, Anne's health deteriorated resulting from a bad case of bronchitis, leaving her without the ability to speak above a whisper. After this scare, Anne slowly began to stop working with Helen and Polly; in 1929 she had her right eye removed to help relieve pain that she suffered due to the eye disease, Trachoma. Anne continued to support Helen with everything she was doing in her life and with her help as well as Polly's, they were able to make braille the standard system of reading and writing for the blind in 1932. They were also able to convince President Roosevelt to provide more assistance for the blind. In 1935, he signed the Social Security Act, which provided unemployment insurance, retirement funds, and assistance for the children to the disabled. Because Helen, Anne, and Polly campaigned for this, today people with vision loss is in the category of 'disabled' and can therefore, apply for financial help. Sadly, on October 20, 1936, Anne Sullivan died in her sleep with Helen beside her holding her hand. Her ashes were placed across the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Helen did not stop advocating for people with disabilities though; her and Polly continued to travel the world, making speeches, promoting equal rights for those with vision loss, and becoming members of many organizations.

Click the grid to the left: Learn to read Braille in eight easy steps!