Helen’s world was changed, and she found herself excited for the future for the first time in her life. Helen and Miss Sullivan had an instant connection, and with Miss Sullivan’s constant, patient care, Helen began to understand and acquire language through finger-spelling the alphabet. Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan’s arrival in Tuscumbia marked a new chapter in young Helen’s life. Within weeks, they received a letter back telling them that a teacher had been found, and the following March, Helen’s teacher arrived. Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, and they did so. Alexander Graham Bell, famed inventor of the telephone and advocate for deaf and blind children. After a trip to an oculist in Baltimore, the Kellers were referred to Dr.

Without any language at all, Helen often succumbed to fits of frustration and rage, and Helen’s parents-far from any school for the deaf or the blind and afraid that no tutors would come to their small Alabama town-feared that their daughter would never be educated. Despite Helen’s impairment, she still understood a lot of what was happening around her, and could complete small tasks, play games with her dog and the daughter of the family cook, and even get into mischief and danger, once nearly knocking her baby sister Mildred from the crib where she slept.Īs Helen grew, so did her desire to express herself. In the months after Helen’s illness, she clung tightly to her mother, and the two of them developed a few crude signs by which Helen could communicate her wants and needs. Helen’s fever eventually broke, but the illness left her blind, dumb, and deaf. When she was nearly two years old, however, she was struck with a sickness which gave her a high fever and which her parents and her doctor all feared she would not survive.

The beginning of Helen’s life was ordinary but joyful-she lived with her parents in a small house on a large familial estate, and was a happy and intrepid child. Helen’s paternal lineage can be traced back to Switzerland, where one of her ancestors, ironically, was the first teacher of deaf children in Zurich.

Helen Keller was born on June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small town in Northern Alabama.

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