HELEN KELLER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26543, 19 August 1947, Page 2

HELEN KELLER

VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND Miss Helen Adams Keller, the deaf ant} blind American authoress and musician, will visit New Zealand next year to tour the country and hold public meetings. She will come to the Dominion from Australia, which she is to visit next March at the invitation of the Royal Sydney Industrial Blind Institution. This was announced by the acting president of the

institution. Sir. Benjamin Fuller, at the sixty-sixth annual meeting. Miss Keller, who will be accompanied by her eyes,” Miss Polly Thompson, was born m 1880 and has been deaf and blind sl , j Ce ? n . iU nes s when she was 19 months old. Miss Keller learned to speak by feeling the lips of her teacher. Her scholastic career, considering her enormous handicaps, was phenomenal, and she graduated B.A. in 1904. She has written many books and has given public lectures to raise money for the instruction of the blind and of deaf-mutes. Miss Keller, who.has travelled widely has recently concluded a to.ur of Europe! where she visited the war blinded to’ make a survey of their post-war living conditions and prepare the way for a campaign to raise funds for their relief.