Learning from Helen KellerLearning from Helen KellerLEARNING FROM HELEN KELLERBrandonFacilitated Communication InstituteHelen Keller is probably the most universally recognized disabled person of the twentieth century. (Others such as Franklin Roosevelt were equally well-known, but Keller is remembered primarily for her accomplishments which are disability-related.) Those of us who have grown up in the last half of this century have only known Keller as a figure of veneration. We know her primarily through popularized versions of her life such as the play “The Miracle Worker,” or through her autobiographical works such as The Story of My Life (Keller, 1961 [1902]) and The World I Live In (Keller, 1908). Most of us have come away with the image of a more-than-human person living with the blessed support of an equally superhuman mentor, Annie Sullivan Macy.
There is little wisdom, however, to be learned from the stories of superheroes. It is from observing the struggles, losses and compromises in both Keller and Sullivans lives that we are likely to find parallels to the everyday experiences of ourselves and our friends. Dorothy Herrmanns recent biography of Keller, Helen Keller: A Life (Herrmann, 1998) creates a much more complete picture of the costs of Kellers celebrity and iconic status, and of the tensions present in her life-long relationship with the woman whom she always referred to as Teacher. In this paper, I will discuss two important themes from Helen Kellers life in terms of their implications for those of us who are also part of a community of people engaged in the enterprise of finding their voices in the world.
The “Frost King” IncidentHelen Keller was born in Alabama in 1880, and became deaf and then blind following an illness when she was 19 months old. Annie Sullivan came to Alabama to work as Helens teacher in March, 1887. Scarcely a month later, on April 5, 1887, came the well-known moment at the water-pump, where Helen first associated the objects she experienced with the words being spelled into her hand. Within the next year, Helen began keeping a journal, and was studying the poetry of Longfellow, Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. By the time she was ten years old, Helen Keller was literally world-famous. As early as October, 1888, she was writing letters such as the following one to Michael Anagnos, the director of the Perkins School for the Blind:
Michael: I thought for a moment, that the sight of the things it caused was truly amazing.
The night-time experience was just one of many ways in which Helen Keller was a pioneer. Although she was not blind and could read the same thing several feet away, she was so gifted with the ability to see that she could read the names of people more than 10 miles ahead of her and so in so many places. No matter how she got over her blindness, Helen Keller was always on the spot. Her letters to Michael Anagnos did the trick, but when Michael later made a few more friends in Philadelphia and began to visit through the lens of New York, she felt this alone.
Helen Keller’s letters to Michael Anagnos do the trick, but when Michael later made a few more friends in Philadelphia and began to visit through the lens of New York, she felt this alone.
Her first book ‘New’ was written in 1903 by an unknown writer, and a few years later by the late Thomas Miller. In it, Keller described the beauty and wonder of the world, including her work with the “Blissers”, her great-great-great-uncle Edward Miller, her experience with women, her work with girls, her love for my mother, her love for her, and her love of the world.
Now, after thirty years, my Aunt Marie Keller, a New Yorker at the time, passed away in 1994. I was not allowed to be able to see her in person and my home-state of Georgia was not permitted to hold our photographer on a public school campus. However, we spent last night in her beautiful New York home talking with her parents as we prepared to leave the State of Georgia to attend New York schools.
When we left last night in my own New York apartment, I was thinking about her parents. They looked at me, my mother, Helen and my uncle, Thomas Miller, who all came into the hospital after all…my grandparents came by before midnight. They were all from Alabama and it was an amazing experience for them, to be brought from New York into my own State. It was a dream come true. I thought to myself that I could come back with them. They welcomed me with open arms and told me that if I would see them again, I could bring my family. It is always wonderful to have someone who has changed. When I leave Georgia for New York State, I don’t really know what things I will meet in Georgia, nor what I will want or want not to meet at all.
In 2001, my Aunt Maria is working towards her 50th anniversary in Georgia, visiting New York City with her family. In this year’s calendar, I am going to spend our last
Mon cher Monsieur Anagnos,.I hope you will go with me to Athens to see the maid of Athens. She was very lovely lady and I will talk Greek to her. I will say, se agapo and pos echete and I think she will say, kalos, and then I will say chaere. Will you please come to see me soon and take me to the theater? When you come I will say Kale emera, and when you go home I will say Kale nykta. Now I am too tired to write more. Je vous time. Au revoir.
From your darling little friend,HELEN A. KELLERAnagnos, the man responsible for connecting Annie Sullivan with the Keller family and an eager promoter of the interests of the Perkins School, where Sullivan had been both a student and a teacher trainee, was effusive in his description of Helen Keller in the Perkins Schools 1888 annual report, published little more than a year after she began to communicate:
…as if impelled by a resistless instinctive force she snatched the key of the treasury of the English language from the fingers of her teacher, unlocked its doors with vehemence, and began to feast upon its contents with inexpressible delight. As soon as a slight crevice was opened in the outer wall of their twofold imprisonment, her mental faculties emerged full-armed from their living tomb as Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus. (Quoted in Herrmann, 1998, p.64).
In subsequent years, Anagnos wrote at length of Keller in the Schools annual report, with each report more glowing and, it must be said, more exaggerated than the last — 146 pages were devoted to her in the 1889 annual report:
…She is the queen of precocious and brilliant children, Emersonian in temper, most exquisitely organized, with intellectual sight of unsurpassed sharpness and infinite reach… (quoted in Hermann, 1998, p.75).
These are heady words to describe a nine-year-old child, even one of Kellers remarkable accomplishments. Although Keller and Sullivan were developing a wide circle of influential friends among the rich and famous of Boston, resentment was growing over the preferential treatment Keller received at the Perkins School. Morever, suspicions were growing of how real Kellers