Helen Keller Life is not always easy. Sometimes it presents us with serious problems that make us sad and even depressed. When it comes to this, you may remember the example of Helen Keller, born in a small American town in 1880.
The illness struck Helen Keller when she was a baby and left her deaf and blind before she learned to speak. As a child Helen was wild and disobedient. She seemed not to understand what was going on in the world around her. In spite of Helen’s illness her parents decided that she should have some education and started looking for a teacher.
Helen Keller's new life began on a March day in 1887 when she was seven years old. On that day Anne Mansfield Sullivan, a 20-year-old graduate of the Perkins School, came to the town to be her teacher. From that day, the two of them – teacher and pupil – were inseparable.
Miss Sullivan began her first lesson by handing Helen a doll and pressing “d-o-l-l” into the child's hand. In this way she hoped to teach Helen to connect objects with letters. Helen quickly learned to form the letters correctly and in the correct order. In the days that followed, she learned to spell lots of different words.
Helen Keller was a talented pupil and quickly learnt how to read and write. She enjoyed reading books written for blind children. In 1890, when she was just 10, she decided to learn to speak. Somehow she had found out that a little deaf-blind girl in Norway managed to do it.
At first Helen had difficulty with speaking, but with the time and help from Anne she developed a clear voice. Later, she was able to speak in public for large crowds which came to her whenever she gave her lectures. There was usually a storm of applause after her every lecture.
After school Helen went to college and graduated it with honours. She got a Bachelor of Arts degree. Throughout those years and until her own death in 1936, Anne Sullivan was always by Helen's side. She pressed book after book and lecture after lecture into her pupil's hand.
One of Helen’s professors was so deeply impressed by her essays in English that he suggested the girl writing the story of her life. Helen followed the advice and wrote the book while still at college. It was a cheerful account of how a young girl was able to live a happy life in spite of her terrible misfortunes. Later she wrote several books more. In her books and lectures Helen did everything possible to help and encourage those who were blind. For the rest of her life, Helen Keller worked for improving education for the blind and deaf.
Helen Keller lived in many different places – Alabama; Cambridge and Wrentham, Massachusetts; Forest Hills, New York, but perhaps her favorite residence was the house in Easton, which she called “Arcan Ridge”. She moved to that white house in 1936, after her beloved teacher's death. And it was “Arcan Ridge” she called home for the rest of her life. She died in 1968. |