Helen Keller, role model for millions

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Ala., the daughter of Capt. Arthur Henley Keller and Kate Adams Keller, with full sight and hearing. However, in February 1882, when Helen was 19 months old, she became ill. To this day, the nature of her illness remains a mystery. Doctors of the time called it �brain fever,� while modern-day doctors think it may have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Whatever the illness, Helen was expected to die. When the fever eventually subsided, Helen�s family believed their daughter to be well again. However, Helen�s mother soon noticed that her daughter failed to respond when the dinner bell sounded or when she passed her hand in front of her daughter�s eyes. Her parents realized that Helen�s illness had left her both blind and deaf.

The following years proved very hard for Helen and her family. Helen grew to be a very difficult child, smashing dishes and lamps and frightening the whole household with screaming and temper tantrums. Neighbors and relatives thought she should be placed in an institution.

By the time Helen was 6, her family had become desperate. Looking after Helen was proving too much for them. She was taken to a specialist, who told her parents not to give up hope and advised them to visit a local expert on the problems of deaf children. This expert was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. He suggested that the Kellers write the director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind and request a teacher for Helen. They did so, and Anne Sullivan was recommended. Anne related well to Helen because she had lost the majority of her sight by the age of 5 and had trained as a teacher for the blind.

Anne started teaching Helen to finger spell and was able to make contact with the girl�s mind through the sense of touch. She worked out a sort of alphabet by which she spelled out words on Helen�s hand. Gradually, the child was able to connect words with objects. Once she understood, her progress was rapid. Within three years she knew the alphabet and could read and write in Braille. A special typewriter was made for her on which she did all her writing.

Until she was ten years old, Helen Keller could only talk with the sign language of the deaf-mute. Her teacher decided she should learn to speak and helped her take lessons from a teacher of the deaf. By the time she was 16, she could speak well enough to go to preparatory school and to college. She graduated from Radcliffe with honors. Anne Sullivan stayed with her through these years, interpreting lectures and class discussions for her.