In Spite Of Blindness and Deafness, Helen Keller made speeches!

Helen Keller was only nineteen months when she was stricken with scarlet fever which left her deaf, blind, without a sense of smell. Since she was unable either to hear or see, the difficulty of teaching can be readily appreciated. This great task was undertaken by Miss Anne Sullivan. The Story of Helen's Education and rise to greatness as a writer and lecturer in spite of her enormous handicaps, is a stirring record indeed.

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film "The Miracle Worker".

A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled, and was outspoken in her anti-war convictions. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other radical left causes. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971 in spite of her difficulties.

Helen's father's lineage can be traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland. Coincidentally, one of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Helen reflects upon this coincidence in her first autobiography, stating "that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs; by the age of seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.

In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deaf and blind woman, Laura Bridgman, dispatched young Helen, accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice. He subsequently put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston. Michael Anaganos, the school's director, asked former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship, Sullivan evolving into governess and then eventual companion.


Anne Sullivan arrived at Keller's house in March 1887, and immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller was frustrated, at first, because she did not understand that every object had a word uniquely identifying it. In fact, when Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the doll. Keller's big breakthrough in communication came the next month, when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world. Due to a protruding left eye, Keller was usually photographed in profile. Both her eyes were replaced in adulthood with glass replicas for "medical and cosmetic reasons" While she was still quite young, her teacher was anxious to let her know about God. How could she do it? She approached the task with a dubious feelings, and prayed that somehow Helen might be given understanding. Laboriously the patient instructress tried to direct her blind pupil's thoughts to heaven above, where God dwells. Imagine her surprise and joy when Helen smilingly replied, "Oh, I have always believed there was a God." in spite of her conditions.

In Spite Of Helen Keller's Life Challenges, she was able to Achieve Her Dreams and History still remembers some of her works and generosity and here are some of the things attributed to her in spite of her difficulties.

• at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
• Keller learned to speak, and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures. She learned to "hear" people's speech by reading their lips with her hands—her sense of touch had become extremely supple. She became proficient at using Braille and reading sign language with her hands as well.
• Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author.
• She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She was a suffragist, a pacifist, an opponent of Woodrow Wilson, a radical socialist and a birth control supporter.
• In 1915 she and George Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition.
• In 1920 she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
• Keller traveled to 40 some-odd countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people.
• Keller met every U.S. President from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain.
• Keller joined the Industrial Workers of the World (known as the IWW or the Wobblies) in 1912, saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In Why I Became an IWW, Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:
• Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles.
• On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' two highest civilian honors.
• In 1965 she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.
• Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut. A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and her ashes were placed there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.
• n 1999, Keller was listed in Gallup's Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.
• In 2003, Alabama honored its native daughter on its state quarter.
• The Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama is dedicated to her.
• There are streets named after Helen Keller in Getafe, Spain, in Lod, Israel and in Lisbon, Portugal.
• A preschool for the deaf and hard of hearing in Mysore, India, was originally named after Helen Keller by its founder K. K. Srinivasan.
• On October 7, 2009, a bronze statue of Helen Keller was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection, as a replacement for the State of Alabama's former 1908 statue of the education reformer Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry. It is displayed in the United States Capitol Visitor Center and depicts Keller as a seven-year-old child standing at a water pump. The statue represents the seminal moment in Keller's life when she understood her first word: W-A-T-E-R, as signed into her hand by teacher Anne Sullivan. The pedestal base bears a quotation in raised letters and Braille characters: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart." The statue is the first one of a person with a disability and of a child to be permanently displayed at the U.S. Capitol.

The Story of Helen Keller's Triumph in Life in spite Of Her Devastating disabilities is a real wonder to all and proves to us that there is always an ability in disability. No Matter Your Current Physical or Mental Challenges You can still achieve Your Dreams if You only believe that you Can.
All Things are POSSIBLE to him or her that Believes.

Thanks For Reading.
God Bless.