Chip Chick
June is the birth month of the famous author and disability rights advocate Helen Keller.
Though many of us learned about Helen and her amazing story during some of our school years, now is a great time to reflect on her life and the doors she opened for those with disabilities.
Helen was born in Alabama in 1880. Her father, Arthur H. Keller, was a newspaper editor, farmer, and Army veteran. Her mother was Katherine Adams Keller.
Before Helen turned two-years-old, she became seriously ill and subsequently became deaf and blind. She had no formal education and grew up communicating with her family by touching their faces and using signs she invented at home.
But when Helen was seven-years-old, her mother began seeking out teachers who could educate Helen and teach her how to communicate. She was finally referred to Anne Sullivan, a graduate, and director of the Perkins School for the Blind. Anne eventually became Helen’s closest mentor and lifelong friend.
It took a lot of hard work and patience as Anne began teaching Helen how to communicate by spelling words with her fingers on Helen’s palm. They had a breakthrough when Anne ran water over Helen’s hands and spelled out the word ‘water’ on her palm, and this style of communication finally clicked for her.
A year after working with Anne at home, Helen accompanied her to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts, where she learned to read Braille and write. She moved to New York for two years at 14 to work on her speech at two different schools before returning to Massachusetts to attend the Cambridge School for Young Ladies.
Helen then attended the prestigious Radcliffe College and graduated cum laude in 1904. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, and Anne was still by her side, helping her with her studies.
While in school, Helen amazingly wrote her famous novel, The Story of My Life, with the help of Anne and Anne’s husband, John Macy. It was published in 1903 and detailed stories from her childhood. Throughout her life, Helen became a successful author and published 12 books.
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