On March 3, 1887, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan met for the first time. Helen was 6 years old and Anne was 20.
Helen Keller was born in 1880 to a Confederate Civil War veteran and his wife in Alabama. When she was 19 months old, she contracted an illness which left her deaf and blind. Her parents, who wanted her to have as normal a life as possible, contacted Alexander Graham Bell, who was an authority on deafness. Bell also invented the telephone. Bell told the family about the Perkins School for the Blind, near Boston. In turn, the school recommended Anne Sullivan as a teacher for Helen.
Anne Sullivan was born in 1866 in Massachusetts, and was a student at the Perkins School. Because she has a severe visual impairment herself, she had some understanding of Helen's feelings of isolation and frustration.
Anne tried to teach Helen by using her finger to spell out words in the palm of her student's hand. Helen did not understand what her teacher was doing, and resisted, sometimes violently. A breakthrough came one day when Anne held Helen's hand under running water, and spelled out the word "water" in her other hand. At last, Helen understood! From that day forward, she wanted Anne to teach her everything she could.
Helen's love of learning flourished she was able to complete high school and go on to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA. She was the first deaf-blind person to receive a Bachelor's degree. She graduated from college with honors in 1904.
Helen and Anne became inseparable. Anne accompanied Helen to college and continued to help her to communicate and study. This only ended when Anne died in 1935.
Helen became an author and a public speaker. She published her first book, an autobiography called "The Story of My Life," in 1902. She was a strong advocate for the deaf, the blind, and racial equality.
Helen Keller died at her home in Connecticut in 1968 at the age of 87.
