World Acclaims Helen Keller On 75th Birthday

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27710, 14 July 1955, Page 6

World Acclaims Helen Keller On 75th Birthday

(From a Reuter Correspondent;

NEW YORK. Helen Keller was 75 last month and a world she can»neither see nor hear acclaimed anew this remarkable woman. Her story is an almost incredible saga of courage, achievement and unselfish service. Suddenly struck totally deaf and blind when a speechless child of 19 months, Miss Keller lived to become a brilliant scholar gifted in seven languages, an author whose books have appeared in more than 50 translations, and a world-famous humanist. Mark Twain said she and Napoleon were “the two most interesting characters of the 19th century.” President Eisenhower has praised her ‘unique contribution to understanding among the peoples of the world.” Sir Winston Churchill, Mr Nehru and other world statesmen have paid their tributes. Now the American Foundation for the Blind and the Foundation for the Overseas Blind, the two great organisations which channel her work for the handicapped—those “less fortunate than I,” as Miss Keller has put it—have combined to honour her again as “an inspiration to mankind.” Alabama, her native state, proclaimed her birthday as Helen Keller Day. New York, where she works when she is

not travelling the world, also declared a Helen Keller Day. Helen Keller, who has just concluded a gruelling 40,000-mile Far East tour which would tax the strength of a woman half her age, has already scoffed at any idea of retiring from her job as counsellor in international relations for the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind. Healthy, handseme, with the complexion of a stillyoung woman, she has said: “I find life an exciting business—and most exciting when it is lived for others.” And the result of her latest eight-country tour will be new moves to help millions of the blind in the Far East. Miss Keller’s conquest of her own disabilities stems from the interest of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. After illness robbed her of her sight and hearing, her parents enlisted Bell’s help. When Helen was seven, Bell introduced to her aristocratic southern family Anne Sullivan from the Perkins Institution, a famous Boston school for the blind.

Learning Language Miss Sullivan, then only 20, had herself been educated there before she retained her sight after surgery. She rought to her new pupil a doll which the blind children at Perkins had made. With this she made her first cautious attempt to break through the barrier of Helen’s blind-deafness. Miss Sullivan traced the letters d-o-1-1 in the child’s hand.

Helen, whose sharp intelligence had not been dulled by her handicap, quickly learned to outline the alphabet, but she could not immediately comprehend the existence of words. A spout of cold water from the pump outside her Alabama home brought the dawn of understanding. While the stream splashed over one han<|, Miss Sullivan quickly traced w-a-t-e-r in the other. Miss Keller has said: “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought—and somehow the mystery, of language was revealed to me.” By nightfall, she knew 30 words.

Three years after Miss Sullivan came into her life, Helen had an extensive vocabulary but she could not speak. A

special voice teacher was called in. After only 11 lessons, Helen entered the living room of her white cottage and announced slowly in a high, strained voice: “Now I am not dumb.” She has said since: “Learning to speak was the hardest job I ever had, and, alas, I have never quite succeeded.” To this day the woman who has never heard her own, or any, voice—not even as a faint whisper—utters words slowly and with difficulty. Now, when

she makes a speech—and she makes many—her companion, Miss Polly Thomson, repeats it afterwards, though this is not always necessary after an audience has, as it were, got its bearings with Miss Keller’s voice. In 1896, Miss Keller entered the Cambridge School for Young Ladies to be prepared for Radcliffe College four years later. In 1904 she graduated with an honours degree in arts. Throughout her life she has continued in scholarship. Many universities, including that of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, have bestowed on her their honorary doctorates. Even before graduation, Miss Keller had broken into print with her biography, “The Story of My Life.*’ Other books and magazine articles have poured from her Braille and standard typewriters. She uses one for the draft and the other for the final manuscript. When she is not travelling—she has been five times round the world—Miss Keller lives in a rambling colonialstyle house at Easton, Connecticut Meeting her there among the honours and souvenirs of her life of high adventure and dedicated service, one has the impression that she has found more happiness than most who have the senses which she lost so soon.

She admits: “Yes, I am happy.” Her work and a score of other interests keep her so. Her private world of touch, smell and vibration is fascinating. She finds meaning in a handshake. She ran her fingers over Mr Eisenhower’s face, and said she loved his smile. President Roosevelt’s strong features found favour with her. and she praised the “great, wonderful dome” of Sir Winston Churchill’s forehead.