write a biography of helen keller

Helen Keller

(1880-1968)

Who Was Helen Keller?

Helen Keller was an American educator, advocate for the blind and deaf and co-founder of the ACLU. Stricken by an illness at the age of 2, Keller was left blind and deaf. Beginning in 1887, Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, helped her make tremendous progress with her ability to communicate, and Keller went on to college, graduating in 1904. During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments.

Early Life and Family

The family was not particularly wealthy and earned income from their cotton plantation. Later, Arthur became the editor of a weekly local newspaper, the North Alabamian .

Keller was born with her senses of sight and hearing, and started speaking when she was just 6 months old. She started walking at the age of 1.

Loss of Sight and Hearing

Keller lost both her sight and hearing at just 19 months old. In 1882, she contracted an illness — called "brain fever" by the family doctor — that produced a high body temperature. The true nature of the illness remains a mystery today, though some experts believe it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis.

Within a few days after the fever broke, Keller's mother noticed that her daughter didn't show any reaction when the dinner bell was rung, or when a hand was waved in front of her face.

As Keller grew into childhood, she developed a limited method of communication with her companion, Martha Washington, the young daughter of the family cook. The two had created a type of sign language. By the time Keller was 7, they had invented more than 60 signs to communicate with each other.

During this time, Keller had also become very wild and unruly. She would kick and scream when angry, and giggle uncontrollably when happy. She tormented Martha and inflicted raging tantrums on her parents. Many family relatives felt she should be institutionalized.

Keller's Teacher, Anne Sullivan

Keller worked with her teacher Anne Sullivan for 49 years, from 1887 until Sullivan's death in 1936. In 1932, Sullivan experienced health problems and lost her eyesight completely. A young woman named Polly Thomson, who had begun working as a secretary for Keller and Sullivan in 1914, became Keller's constant companion upon Sullivan's death.

Looking for answers and inspiration, Keller's mother came across a travelogue by Charles Dickens, American Notes, in 1886. She read of the successful education of another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman, and soon dispatched Keller and her father to Baltimore, Maryland to see specialist Dr. J. Julian Chisolm.

After examining Keller, Chisolm recommended that she see Alexander Graham Bell , the inventor of the telephone, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell met with Keller and her parents, and suggested that they travel to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts.

There, the family met with the school's director, Michael Anaganos. He suggested Keller work with one of the institute's most recent graduates, Sullivan.

On March 3, 1887, Sullivan went to Keller's home in Alabama and immediately went to work. She began by teaching six-year-old Keller finger spelling, starting with the word "doll," to help Keller understand the gift of a doll she had brought along. Other words would follow.

At first, Keller was curious, then defiant, refusing to cooperate with Sullivan's instruction. When Keller did cooperate, Sullivan could tell that she wasn't making the connection between the objects and the letters spelled out in her hand. Sullivan kept working at it, forcing Keller to go through the regimen.

As Keller's frustration grew, the tantrums increased. Finally, Sullivan demanded that she and Keller be isolated from the rest of the family for a time, so that Keller could concentrate only on Sullivan's instruction. They moved to a cottage on the plantation.

In a dramatic struggle, Sullivan taught Keller the word "water"; she helped her make the connection between the object and the letters by taking Keller out to the water pump, and placing Keller's hand under the spout. While Sullivan moved the lever to flush cool water over Keller's hand, she spelled out the word w-a-t-e-r on Keller's other hand. Keller understood and repeated the word in Sullivan's hand. She then pounded the ground, demanding to know its "letter name." Sullivan followed her, spelling out the word into her hand. Keller moved to other objects with Sullivan in tow. By nightfall, she had learned 30 words.

In 1905, Sullivan married John Macy, an instructor at Harvard University, a social critic and a prominent socialist. After the marriage, Sullivan continued to be Keller's guide and mentor. When Keller went to live with the Macys, they both initially gave Keller their undivided attention. Gradually, however, Anne and John became distant to each other, as Anne's devotion to Keller continued unabated. After several years, the couple separated, though were never divorced.

In 1890, Keller began speech classes at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston. She would toil for 25 years to learn to speak so that others could understand her.

From 1894 to 1896, Keller attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City. There, she worked on improving her communication skills and studied regular academic subjects.

Around this time, Keller became determined to attend college. In 1896, she attended the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, a preparatory school for women.

As her story became known to the general public, Keller began to meet famous and influential people. One of them was the writer Mark Twain , who was very impressed with her. They became friends. Twain introduced her to his friend Henry H. Rogers, a Standard Oil executive.

Rogers was so impressed with Keller's talent, drive and determination that he agreed to pay for her to attend Radcliffe College. There, she was accompanied by Sullivan, who sat by her side to interpret lectures and texts. By this time, Keller had mastered several methods of communication, including touch-lip reading, Braille, speech, typing and finger-spelling.

Keller graduated, cum laude, from Radcliffe College in 1904, at the age of 24.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HELEN KELLER FACT CARD

'The Story of My Life'

With the help of Sullivan and Macy, Sullivan's future husband, Keller wrote her first book, The Story of My Life . Published in 1905, the memoirs covered Keller's transformation from childhood to 21-year-old college student.

Social Activism

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Keller tackled social and political issues, including women's suffrage, pacifism, birth control and socialism.

After college, Keller set out to learn more about the world and how she could help improve the lives of others. News of her story spread beyond Massachusetts and New England. Keller became a well-known celebrity and lecturer by sharing her experiences with audiences, and working on behalf of others living with disabilities. She testified before Congress, strongly advocating to improve the welfare of blind people.

In 1915, along with renowned city planner George Kessler, she co-founded Helen Keller International to combat the causes and consequences of blindness and malnutrition. In 1920, she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union .

When the American Federation for the Blind was established in 1921, Keller had an effective national outlet for her efforts. She became a member in 1924, and participated in many campaigns to raise awareness, money and support for the blind. She also joined other organizations dedicated to helping those less fortunate, including the Permanent Blind War Relief Fund (later called the American Braille Press).

Soon after she graduated from college, Keller became a member of the Socialist Party, most likely due in part to her friendship with John Macy. Between 1909 and 1921, she wrote several articles about socialism and supported Eugene Debs, a Socialist Party presidential candidate. Her series of essays on socialism, entitled "Out of the Dark," described her views on socialism and world affairs.

It was during this time that Keller first experienced public prejudice about her disabilities. For most of her life, the press had been overwhelmingly supportive of her, praising her courage and intelligence. But after she expressed her socialist views, some criticized her by calling attention to her disabilities. One newspaper, the Brooklyn Eagle , wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development."

In 1946, Keller was appointed counselor of international relations for the American Foundation of Overseas Blind. Between 1946 and 1957, she traveled to 35 countries on five continents.

In 1955, at age 75, Keller embarked on the longest and most grueling trip of her life: a 40,000-mile, five-month trek across Asia. Through her many speeches and appearances, she brought inspiration and encouragement to millions of people.

'The Miracle Worker' Movie

Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life , was used as the basis for 1957 television drama The Miracle Worker .

In 1959, the story was developed into a Broadway play of the same title, starring Patty Duke as Keller and Anne Bancroft as Sullivan. The two actresses also performed those roles in the 1962 award-winning film version of the play.

Awards and Honors

During her lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments, including the Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1936, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, and election to the Women's Hall of Fame in 1965.

Keller also received honorary doctoral degrees from Temple University and Harvard University and from the universities of Glasgow, Scotland; Berlin, Germany; Delhi, India; and Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was named an Honorary Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

Keller died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, just a few weeks before her 88th birthday. Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the remaining years of her life at her home in Connecticut.

During her remarkable life, Keller stood as a powerful example of how determination, hard work, and imagination can allow an individual to triumph over adversity. By overcoming difficult conditions with a great deal of persistence, she grew into a respected and world-renowned activist who labored for the betterment of others.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Helen Adams Keller
• Birth Year: 1880
• Birth date: June 27, 1880
• Birth State: Alabama
• Birth City: Tuscumbia
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: American educator Helen Keller overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, as well as co-founder of the ACLU.
• Education and Academia
• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• Wright-Humason School for the Deaf
• Radcliffe College
• Cambridge School for Young Ladies
• Horace Mann School for the Deaf
• Death Year: 1968
• Death date: June 1, 1968
• Death State: Connecticut
• Death City: Easton
• Death Country: United States

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Helen Keller Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/helen-keller
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 6, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
• One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
• Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.
• Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.
• If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.
• A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
• The two greatest characters in the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller. Napoleon tried to conquer the world by physical force and failed. Helen tried to conquer the world by power of mind — and succeeded!” (Mark Twain)
• The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.
• We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.
• [T]he mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
• It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara.
• Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Watch Next .css-smpm16:after{background-color:#323232;color:#fff;margin-left:1.8rem;margin-top:1.25rem;width:1.5rem;height:0.063rem;content:'';display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;}

Suffragettes

Harriet Tubman

Susan B. Anthony

Lucretia Mott

Emmeline Pankhurst

Carrie Chapman Catt

Kate Sheppard

Emily Davison

Molly Brown

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Helen Keller

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 18, 2019 | Original: April 14, 2010

Helen Keller was an author, lecturer, and crusader for the handicapped. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama , She lost her sight and hearing at the age of nineteen months to an illness now believed to have been scarlet fever. Five years later, on the advice of Alexander Graham Bell , her parents applied to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston for a teacher, and from that school hired Anne Mansfield Sullivan. Through Sullivan’s extraordinary instruction, the little girl learned to understand and communicate with the world around her. She went on to acquire an excellent education and to become an important influence on the treatment of the blind and deaf.

Keller learned from Sullivan to read and write in Braille and to use the hand signals of the deaf-mute, which she could understand only by touch. Her later efforts to learn to speak were less successful, and in her public appearances she required the assistance of an interpreter to make herself understood. Nevertheless, her impact as educator, organizer, and fund-raiser was enormous, and she was responsible for many advances in public services to the handicapped.

With Sullivan repeating the lectures into her hand, Keller studied at schools for the deaf in Boston and New York City and graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1904. Her unprecedented accomplishments in overcoming her disabilities made her a celebrity at an early age; at twelve she published an autobiographical sketch in the Youth’s Companion , and during her junior year at Radcliffe, she produced her first book, The Story of My Life ,  still in print in over fifty languages. Keller published four other books of her personal experiences as well as a volume on religion, one on contemporary social problems, and a biography of Anne Sullivan. She also wrote numerous articles for national magazines on the prevention of blindness and the education and special problems of the blind.

In addition to her many appearances on the lecture circuit, Keller in 1918 made a movie in Hollywood, Deliverance , to dramatize the plight of the blind and during the next two years supported herself and Sullivan on the vaudeville stage. She also spoke and wrote in support of women’s rights and other liberal causes and in 1940 strongly backed the United States’ entry into World War II .

In 1924, Keller joined the staff of the newly formed American Foundation for the Blind as an adviser and fund-raiser. Her international reputation and warm personality enabled her to enlist the support of many wealthy people, and she secured large contributions from Henry Ford , John D. Rockefeller , and leaders of the motion picture industry. When the AFB established a branch for the overseas blind, it was named Helen Keller International. Keller and Sullivan were the subjects of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson, which opened in New York in 1959 and became a successful Hollywood film in 1962.

Widely honored throughout the world and invited to the White House by every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson , Keller altered the world’s perception of the capacities of the handicapped. More than any act in her long life, her courage, intelligence, and dedication combined to make her a symbol of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Helen Keller

Undeterred by deafness and blindness, Helen Keller rose to become a major 20 th century humanitarian, educator and writer. She advocated for the blind and for women’s suffrage and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

Born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller was the older of two daughters of Arthur H. Keller, a farmer, newspaper editor, and Confederate Army veteran, and his second wife Katherine Adams Keller, an educated woman from Memphis. Several months before Helen’s second birthday, a serious illness—possibly meningitis or scarlet fever—left her deaf and blind. She had no formal education until age seven, and since she could not speak, she developed a system for communicating with her family by feeling their facial expressions.

Recognizing her daughter’s intelligence, Keller’s mother sought help from experts including inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who had become involved with deaf children. Ultimately, she was referred to Anne Sullivan, a graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, who became Keller’s lifelong teacher and mentor. Although Helen initially resisted her, Sullivan persevered. She used touch to teach Keller the alphabet and to make words by spelling them with her finger on Keller’s palm. Within a few weeks, Keller caught on. A year later, Sullivan brought Keller to the Perkins School in Boston, where she learned to read Braille and write with a specially made typewriter. Newspapers chronicled her progress. At fourteen, she went to New York for two years where she improved her speaking ability, and then returned to Massachusetts to attend the Cambridge School for Young Ladies. With Sullivan’s tutoring, Keller was admitted to Radcliffe College, graduating cum laude in 1904. Sullivan went with her, helping Keller with her studies. (Impressed by Keller, Mark Twain urged his wealthy friend Henry Rogers to finance her education.)

Even before she graduated, Keller published two books, The Story of My Life (1902) and Optimism (1903), which launched her career as a writer and lecturer. She authored a dozen books and articles in major magazines, advocating for prevention of blindness in children and for other causes.  

Sullivan married Harvard instructor and social critic John Macy in 1905, and Keller lived with them. During that time, Keller’s political awareness heightened. She supported the suffrage movement, embraced socialism, advocated for the blind and became a pacifist during World War I. Keller’s life story was featured in the 1919 film, Deliverance . In 1920, she joined Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, and other social activists in founding the American Civil Liberties Union; four years later she became affiliated with the new American Foundation for the Blind in 1924.

After Sullivan’s death in 1936, Keller continued to lecture internationally with the support of other aides, and she became one of the world’s most-admired women (though her advocacy of socialism brought her some critics domestically). During World War II, she toured military hospitals bringing comfort to soldiers.

A second film on her life won the Academy Award in 1955; The Miracle Worker —which centered on Sullivan—won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize as a play and was made into a movie two years later. Lifelong activist, Keller met several US presidents and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. She also received honorary doctorates from Glasgow, Harvard, and Temple Universities.

• “Helen Keller.” Perkins. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• “Helen Keller.” American Foundation for the Blind. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• "Helen Adams Keller." Dictionary of American Biography . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988. U.S. History in Context . Accessed February 4, 2015.
• "Keller, Helen." UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History . Sonia Benson, Daniel E. Brannen, Jr., and Rebecca Valentine. Vol. 5. Detroit: UXL, 2009. 847-849. U.S. History in Context . Accessed February 4, 2015.
• Ozick, Cynthia. “What Helen Keller Saw.” The New Yorker. June 16, 2003. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• Weatherford, Doris. American Women's History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events . New York: Prentice Hall, 1994.
• PHOTO: Library of Congress

MLA - Michals, Debra.  "Helen Keller."  National Women's History Museum.  National Women's History Museum, 2015.  Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra.  "Helen Keller."  National Women's History Museum.  2015.  www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/helen-keller. 

Helen Keller: Described and Captioned Educational Media

Helen Keller Biography, American Foundation for the Blind

Helen Keller, Perkins School for the Blind

Helen Keller Birthplace

Helen Keller International

 The Miracle Worker (1962). Dir. Arthur Penn. (DVD) Film.

The Miracle Worker (2000). Dir. Nadia Tass. (DVD) Film.

Keller, Helen. The World I Live In . New York: NYRB Classics, 2004.

Ford, Carin.  Helen Keller: Lighting the Way for the Blind and Deaf .  Enslow Publishers, 2001.

Herrmann, Dorothy.  Helen Keller: A Life .  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Related Biographies

Stacey Abrams

Abigail Smith Adams

Jane Addams

Toshiko Akiyoshi

Related background, “when we sing, we announce our existence”: bernice johnson reagon and the american spiritual', mary church terrell , belva lockwood and the precedents she set for women’s rights, faith ringgold and her fabulous quilts.

Biography Online

Helen Keller Biography

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy.”

– Helen Keller, On Optimism (1903)

Short Biography of Helen Keller

In 1886, Helen was sent to see an eye, ear and nose specialist in Baltimore. He put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell , who was currently investigate issues of deafness and sound (he would also develop the first telephone) Bell was moved by the experience of working with Keller, writing that:

“I feel that in this child I have seen more of the Divine than has been manifest in anyone I ever met before.”

Alexander Bell helped Keller to visit the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and this led to a long relationship with Anne Sullivan – who was a former student herself. Sullivan was visually impaired and, aged only 20, and with no prior experience, she set about teaching Helen how to communicate. The two maintained a long relationship of 49 years.

Learning to Communicate

In the beginning, Keller was frustrated by her inability to pick up the hand signals that Sullivan was giving. However, after a frustrating month, Keller picked up on Sullivan’s system of hand signals through understanding the word water. Sullivan poured water over Keller’s left hand and wrote out on her right hand the word ‘water’. This helped Helen to fully understand the system, and she was soon able to identify a variety of household objects.

“The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.”

– Helen Keller, The Story of My Life , 1903, Ch. 4

Keller came into contact with American author, Mark Twain . Twain admired the perseverance of Keller and helped persuade Henry Rogers, an oil businessman to fund her education. With great difficulty, Keller was able to study at Radcliffe College, where in 1904, she was able to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree. During her education, she also learned to speak and practise lip-reading. Her sense of touch became extremely subtle. She also found that deafness and blindness encouraged her to develop wisdom and understanding from beyond the senses.

“We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.”

― Helen Keller , The Five-sensed World (1910)

Keller became a proficient writer and speaker. In 1903, she published an autobiography ‘ The Story of My Life ‘ It recounted her struggles to overcome her disabilities and the way it forced her to look at life from a different perspective.

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

― Helen Keller

Political Views

Keller also wrote on political issues, Keller was a staunch supporter of the American Socialist party and joined the party in 1909. She wished to see a fairer distribution of income, and an end to the inequality of Capitalist society. She said she became a more convinced socialist after the 1912 miners strike. Her book ‘ Out of the Dark ‘ (1913) includes several essays on socialism. She supported Eugene V Debs, in each of the Presidential elections he stood for. In 1912, she joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); as well as advocating socialism, Keller was a pacifist and opposed the American involvement in World War One.

Religious Views

In religious matters, she advocated the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Christian theologian who advocated a particular spiritual interpretation of the Bible. She published ‘ My Religion ‘ in 1927.

Charity Work

From 1918, she devoted much of her time to raising funds and awareness for blind charities. She sought to raise money and also improve the living conditions of the blind, who at the time were often badly educated and living in asylums. Her public profile helped to de-stigmatise blindness and deafness. She was also noted for her optimism which she sought to cultivate.

“If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, — if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.”

― Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

Towards the end of her life, she suffered a stroke, and she died in her sleep on June 1, 1968. She was given numerous awards during her life, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, by Lyndon B. Johnson.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Helen Keller ”, Oxford, UK www.biographyonline.net , Published: 1st Feb. 2014. Last updated 3rd March 2017.

Hellen Keller – The Story of My Life

Hellen Keller – The Story of My Life at Amazon

The Biography of Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller was born a healthy child on June 27, 1880, to Captain Arthur H. and Kate Adams Keller of Tuscumbia. Her father, Arthur H. Keller, was a retired Confederate Army captain and editor of the local newspaper. Her mother, Kate Keller, was an educated young woman from Memphis.

When Helen Keller was 19 months old, she was afflicted by an unknown illness, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, which left her deaf and blind.

Helen was quite intelligent and tried to learn in her own way with taste, feel and smell. She developed a rudimentary sign language with which to communicate, but soon she realized that her family members could communicate with their mouths instead of signing. This left her isolated, unruly and prone to wild tantrums. Some members of her family considered institutionalizing her. 

Keller would later write in her autobiography, “the need of some means of communication became so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly.”

Seeking to improve her condition, in 1886 Helen and her parents traveled from their Alabama home to Baltimore, Maryland, to see an oculist who had had some success in dealing with conditions of the eye. After examining Keller, he told her parents that he could not restore her sight, but suggested that she could still be educated, referring them to Alexander Graham Bell, who despite having achieved worldwide fame with the invention of the telephone, was working with deaf children in Washington, D.C.

After the visit Bell connected the Kellers to The Perkins Institute and by March 3, 1887 Anne Sullivan came to Ivy Green to be Helen’s teacher.  The strong willed Sullivan, a recent graduate of the Perkins school, met her match in Helen. The two worked together even though Helen pinched, hit, kicked and even knocked out one of Anne’s teeth. Once she had gained Helen’s trust, the real work could begin.

Anne began teaching Helen using finger spelling into the child’s hand. Although Helen enjoyed this, she didn’t understand it truly until Sullivan was steadily pumping cool water into one of the girl’s hands while repeatedly tapping out the five letters in W-A-T-E-R. She continued finger spelling while pumping the water again and again as young Helen painstakingly struggled to break her world of silence.

Suddenly the signals crossed Helen’s consciousness with a meaning. By nightfall, Helen had learned 30 words using this process.

After Helen’s miraculous break-through at the simple well-pump, she proved so gifted that she soon learned the fingertip alphabet and shortly afterward to write. By the end of August, in six short months, she knew 625 words.

By age 10, Helen had mastered Braille as well as the manual alphabet and even learned to use the typewriter. By the time she was 16, Helen could speak well enough to go to preparatory school and to college. Sullivan interpreted lectures and class discussions to Helen. In 1904 she became the first deaf-blind person to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College.

Helen became one of history’s most remarkable women. She dedicated her life to improving the conditions of the visually impaired and the hearing impaired around the world, lecturing in more than 25 countries. She helped to create the American Civil Liberties Union advocating for the rights of women and of those with disabilities.

During her life she performed on the Vaudeville circuit, earned an Oscar, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, traveled to 25 countries and met every President from Grover Cleveland to John F. Kennedy, 12 to be exact.

Keller stopped her public appearances in 1961 after she suffered a series of strokes. She was unable to attend the ceremony when President Lyndon B.  Johnson awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Keller’s 1968 funeral was held at the National Cathedral, and more than 1,200 people were in attendance. Alabama Senator Lister Hill gave the eulogy. He said, “She will live on, one of the few, the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and faith.”

Helen is interred at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. in the Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea.

A Cathedral crypt is just off that chapel. A small, bronze plaque on the wall shows this is Keller’s final resting place.  The plaque simply states: “Helen Keller and her lifelong companion Anne Sullivan Macy are interred in the columbarium behind this chapel.” Those same words are also written in Braille.

Although only Keller’s and Sullivan’s names are listed on the plaque, Polly Thomson, Keller’s companion later in life, is also interred with the other two women’s ashes.

As a name that is known worldwide, Helen Keller is a symbol of courage and hope.  Yet, she is much more than a name or a symbol.  She was a woman of astounding intelligence, unwavering determination, unbelievable courage and insurmountable achievement.  She dedicated her entire life to the betterment of others, helping people see the potential in their own lives, as well as the lives of people around them. She became the first blind-deaf person to effectively communicate with the sighted and hearing world.  In so doing, she became an international celebrity from the age of eight, even before the era of mass communications.

Helen Adams Keller was born on June, 27, 1880 to Arthur H. Keller and Kate Adams Keller in the small, north Alabama town of Tuscumbia.  When she was only 19 months old, she contracted a fever that would leave her both deaf and blind.  At almost seven years of age, her mother and father took her to see the famous inventor, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who advised them to hire a governess for the child.

On March 3, 1887, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, a partially blind, twenty-one year old woman, arrived in Tuscumbia to be Helen’s teacher.  With patience, understanding and love, Miss Sullivan was able to save Helen from her “double dungeon of darkness and silence”.

With the help of her beloved teacher, Helen quickly and eagerly learned to read and write.  After attending high school at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts, Miss Sullivan helped Helen enroll in Radcliffe College, formerly the all-male Harvard College’s coordinate institution for female students.  With remarkable determination, Helen graduated Cum Laude in 1904, becoming the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college. At that time, she announced that her life would be dedicated to the amelioration of blindness.

After graduation, Helen Keller began her life’s work of helping blind and deaf-blind people.  She appeared before state and national legislatures and international forums.  She regarded herself as a “world citizen”, visiting 39 countries on five continents between 1939 and 1957.  She published 14 books and produced numerous articles.  Not only was she out-spoken on the needs and issues affecting her fellow deaf and deaf-blind comrades, Helen was also a valiant supporter of women’s suffrage, civil rights, and the labor union movement, as well as many other worthwhile and important causes.

Helen Keller’s pilgrimage from Tuscumbia, Alabama to worldwide recognition is an inspiring story that took her from silence and darkness to a life of vision and advocacy.  Against overwhelming odds, she waged a seemingly impossible battle to re-enter the world she had lost.  She is one of the most powerful symbols of triumph over adversity our era has produced, leading Winston Churchill to call her, “The greatest woman of our age”.

Helen Keller won numerous honors, including several honorary university degrees, the Lions Humanitarian Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the French Legion of Honor and election to the Women’s Hall of Fame.  She also met every President of the United States, from Calvin Coolidge to John F. Kennedy.

Helen died on June 1, 1968 at the age of 87.  She was laid to rest in St. Joseph’s Chapel, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  Her legacy reminds us that with faith and courage, we can overcome obstacles in our own lives.  With endurance and determination, we can help to better the lives of those around us. With love and patience, we can leave this world a better place.

In 1968, Senator Lister Hill eulogized her as “One of the few persons not born to die”.  She will always be known as “The first lady of courage”.

View photos of Helen Keller and those she touched.

View the chronology of Helen Keller’s life.

“To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength un-defeatable.” -Helen Keller

Featured Reading

The Foundation understands that the message of courage and selflessness implied in Helen Keller’s legacy is and always will be important to transmit to new generations – both for its own value, and as a means to promote public understanding of vision and hearing research.

Continue Reading…

Help Advance Research

The Foundation’s research discoveries have the potential to save substantial sight and to reduce healthcare expenditures by $50 million annually. The research efforts have also generated more than 700 publications and presentations and earned a particularly strong reputation in the areas of eye trauma and surgical treatment of the center of vision, the macula. The Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research was established to honor research excellence and is now commonly regarded as the premier award in vision research.

Double your impact!

Let's build a better world.

Helen Keller Intl

Helen keller’s life and legacy.

Helen Keller

Helen Keller is known the world over as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds.  Yet she was so much more.  A woman of luminous intelligence, high ambition, and great accomplishment, she was driven by her deep compassion for others to devote her life to helping them overcome significant obstacles to living healthy and productive lives. 

A Living Legacy

Helen Keller Intl was co-founded in 1915 by two extraordinary individuals, Helen Keller and George Kessler, to assist soldiers blinded during their service in the first World War. Since our founding, we have committed ourselves to continuing Helen’s work.

Guided by her fierce optimism, we have been working on the front lines of health for more than 100 years. We deliver life-changing health care to vulnerable families in places where the need is great, but access is limited. Our proven, science-based programs empower people to create opportunities in their own lives.

Today we prioritize the essential building blocks of good health, sound nutrition and clear vision, helping millions of people create lasting change in their own lives.

Our commitment to continuing Helen’s work is firmly rooted in her own belief:

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.”

A Brief Biographical Timeline

1880:  On June 27, Helen Keller is born in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

1882:   Following a bout of illness, Helen loses her sight and hearing.

1887:  Helen’s parents hire Anne Sullivan, a graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, to be Helen’s tutor.  Anne begins by teaching Helen that objects have names and that she can use her fingers to spell them. Over time, Helen learns to communicate via sign language, to read and write in Braille, to touch-lip read, and to speak.

1900:  After attending schools in Boston and New York, Helen matriculates at Radcliffe College.

1903:  Helen’s first book, an autobiography called The Story of My Life , is published.

1904:  Helen graduates cum laude from Radcliffe, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

1915:  Helen, already a vocal advocate for people with disabilities, co-founds the American Foundation for Overseas Blind to support World War I veterans blinded in combat. This organization later becomes Helen Keller Intl and expands its mission to address the causes and consequences of blindness, malnutrition and poor health.

Help sustain — and build — Helen’s legacy.  Your donation now can transform the lives of vulnerable children and adults facing vision loss, malnutrition and diseases of poverty.

1920:  Helen helps found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

1924:  Helen joins the American Foundation for the Blind. She serves as a spokesperson and ambassador for the foundation until her death.

1946:  Helen begins touring internationally on behalf of the American Foundation for Overseas Blind (see 1915 above), expanding her advocacy for people with vision impairment.  In 11 years, she will visit 35 countries on five continents.

1956:  Helen wins an Academy Award for a documentary film about her life.

1961:  Helen suffers a stroke and retires from public life.

1964:  Helen is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson.

1968:  On June 1, Helen dies peacefully at her home in Connecticut.  Her ashes are interred at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

Get updates & stay connected

Put your compassion to work for families who lack essential nutrition and healthcare — and help them build more resilient futures.

Act before midnight on June 5 to have your gift matched!

Helen Keller Biography: Courage in the Dark

At the age of seven, Helen Keller was described my family members as a little monster. She threw temper tantrums, attacked people and had terrible personal habits. Yet, within a year, the deaf and blind girl had been transformed. She became teachable and that teaching untapped a level of genius – and determination – which saw her overcome her disabilities and achieve unimaginable success . In this week’s Biographics we explore how Helen Keller beat incredible odds to become an inspiration to the world.

A ‘Normal’ Beginning

Helen Keller was born on June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small town in northern Alabama. She was a perfectly healthy baby with the ability to see and hear. Her mother Kate, just 23 years old, was a pampered Southern belle who doted on her first child. Helen’s father, Arthur, a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, was 42 when his daughter was born. Kate was his second wife and he had two grown sons from his first marriage.

The birth of Helen was a relief to Kate, who now had a child of her own to shower love and attention upon. Helen was a quick developer, speaking her first words at six months and and taking her first steps on her first birthday. However, in February, 1882, at the age of nineteen months, she became severely ill with what doctors at the time called ‘brain fever.’ Modern researchers believe she may have had Scarlet Fever or, possibly, meningitis. Whatever the cause of her illness, the local doctor was convinced that the child would not survive.

A World of Darkness and Solitude

Helen did survive – but the illness had robbed her of her hearing and her sight. Her bright, happy world was now filled with silence and darkness. As an adult, Helen recalled coming out of her illness . . .

I was too young to realize what had happened. When I awoke and found that all was dark and still, I suppose I thought it was night, and I must have wondered why day was so long coming. Gradually, however, I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me, and forgot that it had ever been day.

For the first few months after her illness, a terrified Helen would do no more than sit on her mother’s lap and cling to her dress as Kate tried to do her daily chores. Then she began to venture out on her own, first crawling around the room and feeling her way forward. She discovered that her hands could, in a small way, do the job of her eyes, helping her to identify objects and areas of the house.

With Kate’s patient assistance, Helen also developed a crude system of communication; a shake of the head for ‘no’, a nod for ‘yes’, a pull on her mother’s dress for ‘come’. Before long she had incorporated pantomime actions into her ‘vocabulary’ – if she wanted ice-cream she would pretend she was working the freezer while shivering. He ever-attentive mother would then rush to give her what she wanted.

Helen proved to be a very determined child. If she set her mind on a task, she would keep at it until she was successful. Her greatest desire was to improve her ability to communicate with others. Making simple signs with her hands was not enough. The inability to make people understand what she was thinking and feeling led to a level of frustration that welled deep inside her. This led to outbursts of temper, screaming fits and violent outbursts.

Helen’s temper tantrums terrorized the family. She would smash lanterns, thrust her fist in plates of food and claw and pinch whoever was close by. Relatives referred to the child as a ‘monster’ and strongly urged Kate and Arthur to put her in an institution.

In 1885, Kate had a second child, Mildred, a baby sister for Helen. With her mother’s doting attention now being shared, Helen became intensely jealous. Once she knocked over Mildred’s cot, causing the baby to fall out. A desperate Kate was at her wit’s end, unable to control or help Helen. But she was determined not to send her away.

When Helen was six, her father learned of a doctor in Baltimore, Maryland, named Julian Chisholm who had helped restore sight to blind people. The family took the trip to consult with Dr. Chisholm only to be told that there was nothing medically that could be done to fix Helen’s eyesight. But the doctor did hold out a ray of hope. He told the Kellers about a man who specialized in helping deaf children to communicate. His name was Alexander Graham Bell.

Although best remembered as the inventor of the telephone, Bell’s passion was helping the deaf. His mother and his wife were both deaf. In fact, he had met his wife, Mabel, when he had taken on the job as her private tutor, teaching her through a system of signing that he had developed. The Keller’s traveled to Washington to meet him.

Helen felt comfortable with Bell right away. At that first meeting he sat her on his knee and handed her his pocket watch. She was delighted with the vibrations she felt when the watch struck the hour. Bell suggested that the Kellers write to the Perkins Institute For The Blind in Boston, requesting a tutor for Helen. The Institute trained teachers who could go out and work with deaf and blind students. The director of the Institute looked over his list of recent graduates, settling upon his star pupil, a twenty year old who was, herself, partially blind from suffering trachoma as a child. Her name was Anne Sullivan.

Enter the Miracle Worker

Anne Sullivan arrived at the Keller house on March 3rd, 1887. Helen stood in the doorway as she approached. The child knew, from her mother’s scurried activity that morning, that something important was happening, but she didn’t know what. Years later, however, she would write . . .

The most important day I remember in all my life is the one in which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. Helen Keller

Helen could hear footsteps approaching. Assuming it was her mother, she held out her hand. Anne took the girl’s hand and pulled her in for an embrace. But when Helen realized that this was a stranger, she struggled to break free. This was the first of many temper outbursts that Anne would be confronted with. The very next day, in a fit of rage, the student knocked out one of her teacher’s front teeth.

But Helen was quickly to realize that Miss Sullivan was not about to let the petulant child get away her outrageous behavior, as had been happening up until then. When, at the breakfast table, Helen reached across to grab food from Anne’s plate, as she was accustomed to doing with her family members, Anne grabbed her hand and pushed it away. This sent Helen into a fit of rage – she flopped on the floor and exhibited a full on tantrum. Sullivan asked the other family members to leave the room and lock the door. She then proceeded to continue eating her breakfast, completely ignoring Helen’s performance. Finally, the exasperated child got off the floor and felt for Anne’s body to see what she was doing. When she discovered that Anne was calmly eating her food she again began to grab at the plate. But, each time, Anne would slap her hand away. Helen then began pinching Anne’s hand, something she was allowed to do with impunity to her family members. Again Anne slapped the hand. Finally, Helen sat back on her chair and began eating her own food.

Anne soon came to the realization that Helen’s family members had been enabling her bad behavior. She knew that to make any progress, she would have to separate the child from her parents. The Kellers agreed to let Anne and Helen live in a small cottage not far from the main house. Anne wanted Helen to think that they had traveled a long distance from the family, so the two of them set out on a carriage ride that, unknown to Helen, circled back to the cottage.

Helen wasn’t happy to be packed off with her strict new teacher. She spent the first day screaming and throwing things around the cottage. That night, Anne had to hold Helen down for hours just to keep her in bed. The child’s strength and determination were incredible. But Anne’s was just that little bit greater.

As the days and weeks passed, Anne was able to slowly bring Helen under control. The change began when Anne started spelling out words on Helen’s palm. The first word was DOLL. The finger play intrigued Helen and she proved to be an excellent mimic. Soon she was spelling out a dozen three letter words with her fingers – but she still didn’t know what they meant.

The breakthrough came on April 5th, 1887. That morning, Anne had been trying to get Helen to understand the difference between the words ‘mug’ and ‘water.’ She took her to the water pump outside the cottage and had the girl hold out a mug. Anne then worked the pump so that water filled it and began to overflow. Then she began to spell the word WATER on Helen’s free hand.

Suddenly the light went off in Helen’s mind. She later wrote . . .

That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope joy, set it free.

Now, that she had a taste of word meanings, she couldn’t get enough. She wanted Anne to spell out everything around her. She managed to add dozens of new words to her vocabulary that day.

As her understanding of the world grew, Helen’s personality began to mellow and the temper tantrums became less frequent. She came to understand that people would treat her with greater empathy if she displayed a kind, caring personality.

With the key to knowledge – understanding word meaning – now unlocked, Helen was able to learn with amazing speed. In just a few months she was reading books in Braille. Anne was no longer spelling only simple words into Helen’s palm. Now she was signing portions of Shakespeare and the Bible. By the time she was nine, Helen was ‘reading the works of such great poets as Shelley, Longfellow and Oliver Wendell-Holmes. This made her far more advanced, in a literary sense, than most other children of her age.

Anne quickly came to the realization that Helen’s ability to comprehend complex ideas was highly advanced. Writing a report to the director of the Perkins School for the Blind, she spoke of Anne’s near-genius level learning ability. But she added that that director must not show the report to anyone else. She didn’t want Anne to be turned into a prodigy. However, the director, Michael Anagnos, saw Helen’s story as an opportunity for reflected glory. He titled the 56th annual report of the Perkins School ‘Helen Keller: A Second Laura Bridgeman.’ In the report he embellished Helen’s story, making it even more irresistible to the press.

Before long newspapers all over the country were writing gushing stories about the child genius who was reading Shakespeare, despite not being able to see or hear. Helen’s story even reached across to Europe, where Queen Victoria was intrigued to hear of the brilliant little deaf and blind girl.

By age ten, Helen Keller was an internationally renowned figure. When a policeman shot her dog, Lioness, the news was picked up by the papers. People began sending her money to buy another dog. Helen was reported as saying that she didn’t need a new dog, but she would like to use the money to help a poor blind, deaf and mute boy name Tommy Stringer to attend the Perkins School for the Blind. The public responded and Tommy’s tuition fees were paid for. This inspired Helen to want to help more children so, she began writing letters to people who were willing to donate money.

Learning to Speak

By the time she was ten years of age, Helen had not spoken a clear word in her life. But then, in March 1890 she heard about a blind / deaf girl in Norway who had learned to speak with her mouth. She now became obsessed with doing the same thing. Anne Sullivan knew just who could help – Sarah Fuller, the director of the Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, Massachusetts. Fuller decided to teach Helen herself. She took hold of Helen’s hand and placed it over her mouth to allow the girl to feel the movement of her lips and tongue as she spoke. Helen then copied the motions with her own speech organs. After an hour of intense concentration and effort she was able to speak her first sentence . . .

It is too warm.

The sound of Helen’s voice, however, was raspy and almost impossible to understand. Her untrained vocal cords would need a lot of practice before she was able to make legible speech. In later years, she would train for three summers under the guidance of a famous music teacher to improve her speaking voice.

Back home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Helen and Anne continued to work on speech development. They also developed a method of ‘hearing’ what others were saying. She would place her thumb on the throat of the speaker, her forefinger on their lips and her middle finger on their nose, allowing her to translate the vibrations into sound.

“The Frost King”

In November, 1891, 11-year old Helen sent a birthday present to Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institute. It was a short story that she had written on her Braille slate called ‘The Frost King.’ Anagnos was impressed with the quality of the prose and published the story in the Perkins Alumni magazine. Helen was overjoyed to become a published author. But her joy was short-lived.

Reports reached Tuscumbia that there was a book in print called The Frost Fairies by Margaret T. Canby. The story was uncannily similar to Helen’s story, The Frost King. Accusations started to circulate that she had plagiarized the story. When this was explained to her, she was horrified. Reading Canby’s book, she realized the similarities were striking. But she was adamant that she had written her own, original story.

The reality was that Helen had become a voracious reader. She would digest one book after another, with no thought for who had written them. Ideas became jumbled in her mind and she was unable to remember if they came from herself or from what she had read. So, when she enthusiastically produced her story, she believed that the ideas were her own. However, a worker at the Perkins Institute had, indeed, read the Frost Fairies to her over a year before. The story had become lodged in her subconscious and was clearly the inspiration for The Frost King.

This incident caused deep embarrassment to Helen. She wrote in her diary . . .

It made us feel so bad that people thought we had been untrue and wicked. My heart was full of tears, for I love the beautiful truth with my whole heart and mind.

Michael Anagnos was also humiliated by the incident. He had to print a retraction to explain the mix-up. After questioning Helen, he believed that no deliberate plagiarism was involved. But then one of his teachers reported to him that Helen had ‘confessed’ the wrongdoing to her. The truth was that this manipulative teacher had twisted Helen’s words to make her sound guilty. It was enough, however, for Anagnos to turn against Helen, and his former star pupil, Anne Sullivan. He set up a formal hearing in which Helen was interrogated by an 8-member panel. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of the 11-year-old’s life. After a day of tough scrutiny, the panel was split down the middle as to whether deliberate plagiarism was involved. In the end, Anagnos split the stalemate, coming down on the side of Helen.

The Fisher King experience haunted Helen for many years to come. Whenever she wrote a sentence from then onwards, she would check it repeatedly to make sure that it was her own, original work.

The World At Large

In March, 1893, Anne and Helen attended the Presidential inauguration of Grover Cleveland. From there they went to Niagara Falls where Helen was astounded at the power of the vibrations caused by the massive pounding waters. They then went to Chicago to attend the World’s Fair. They were escorted by Alexander Graham Bell, who was featuring his telephone at the great exhibition. But the famous deaf-blind girl who had conquered her handicaps was just as much a drawcard as the renowned inventor.

The exhibition, which featured exhibits from all over the world, thrilled Helen. She was the only one of the millions of visitors who was allowed to run her hands over the exhibits. This gave her a far greater appreciation of the world round eher than anything she had read in books, wetting her appetite to learn more.

Higher Learning

At the age of 16, Helen began studying at the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was now in a class alongside and competing with, girls who could see and hear. Ann Sullivan attended every class alongside Helen, interpreting the lessons. She made rapid progress, completing her first year’s study with honors in German and English. In her second year, however, she struggled, especially at mathematics. The decision was made to withdraw her from the School and provide her with a private tutor. A year later she was ready to take the entrance exams for Radcliffe College, the women’s division of Harvard University. Passing with distinction, she became the first person with major disabilities to enter an institution of higher learning.

Helen found the pace at Radcliffe frenetic. Again she had Anne alongside to spell out the lessons on her fingers, but even she had difficulty keeping pace with the fast talking lecturers. Despite the harried pace, Helen did well, especially in English. During her second year her literacy teacher encouraged her to write her life story so that the world could get an insight into the struggles she had gone through.

Helen worked on the manuscript while also studying, which placed an almost intolerable strain on her. Finally, in March, 1903 The Story of My Life was published. Sales were slow at first but it has gone on to become a beloved classic and was recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th Century. It was the first of 15 books that she would go on to write.

Helen graduated from Radcliffe on June 28, 1904 to become the first person with a serious disability to earn an undergraduate degree. She now found herself in demand for speaking engagements where people flocked to hear her inspirational story. In 1905, Anne Sullivan married John Macy, who had helped Helen publish her autobiography. The three of them lived under the same roof, with Macy and Helen developing a special bond.

Helen devoted the rest of her life to helping the blind. She wrote extensively on the subject and worked tirelessly for a uniform system of Braille. Along with Anne, and sometimes her mother Kate, she travelled internationally, giving lectures in sold out halls everywhere from Canada to Australia. When Anne died in 1936, former housemaid Polly Thomson became Helen’s constant companion. During World War Two, Helen was a ray of hope for the thousands of servicemen who were blinded or deafened in combat. During 1943, alone, she visited 70 army and naval hospitals up and down the United States.

In her later years, Helen Keller was widely regarded as the greatest living American woman. In 1964, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Four years later she suffered a heart attack. She died on June 1st, 1968 at her home in Westport, Connecticut. She was 87 years of age.

Helen Keller Video Biography

Related Biographies

At the age of seventeen he had a master plan for becoming the best known journalist in Britain. He’s been in the midst of media scandals, he’s interviewed some of the most famous celebrities and most…

Twenty-five thousand years ago one’s man’s spiritual journey was the beginning of one of the world’s seven religions -- boasting 376 million followers today. He is simply called “The Buddha,” and he grew up the son…

He was a force of nature - the quintessential Aussie outdoorsmen. With his wicked sense of humor and his insatiable passion for wildlife, Steve Irwin - the crocodile hunter - became a worldwide celebrity. He shone…

Comments are closed.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Biography of Helen Keller, Deaf and Blind Spokesperson and Activist

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

• People & Events
• Fads & Fashions
• Early 20th Century
• American History
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• Military History
• Women's History
• B.A., English Literature, University of Houston

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880–June 1, 1968) was a groundbreaking exemplar and advocate for the blind and deaf communities. Blind and deaf from a nearly fatal illness at 19 months old, Helen Keller made a dramatic breakthrough at the age of 6 when she learned to communicate with the help of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Keller went on to live an illustrious public life, inspiring people with disabilities and fundraising, giving speeches, and writing as a humanitarian activist.

Fast Facts: Helen Keller

• Known For : Blind and deaf from infancy, Helen Keller is known for her emergence from isolation, with the help of her teacher Annie Sullivan, and for a career of public service and humanitarian activism.
• Born : June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama
• Parents : Captain Arthur Keller and Kate Adams Keller
• Died : June 1, 1968 in Easton Connecticut
• Education : Home tutoring with Annie Sullivan, Perkins Institute for the Blind, Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, studies with Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, The Cambridge School for Young Ladies, Radcliffe College of Harvard University
• Published Works : The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, Out of the Dark, My Religion, Light in My Darkness, Midstream: My Later Life
• Awards and Honors : Theodore Roosevelt Distinguished Service Medal in 1936, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, election to the Women's Hall of Fame in 1965, an honorary Academy Award in 1955 (as the inspiration for the documentary about her life), countless honorary degrees
• Notable Quote : "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart."

Early Childhood

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama to Captain Arthur Keller and Kate Adams Keller. Captain Keller was a cotton farmer and newspaper editor and had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War . Kate Keller, 20 years his junior, had been born in the South, but had roots in Massachusetts and was related to founding father John Adams .

Helen was a healthy child until she became seriously ill at 19 months. Stricken with an illness that her doctor called "brain fever," Helen was not expected to survive. The crisis was over after several days, to the great relief of the Kellers. However, they soon learned that Helen had not emerged from the illness unscathed. She was left blind and deaf. Historians believe that Helen had contracted either scarlet fever or meningitis.

The Wild Childhood Years

Frustrated by her inability to express herself, Helen Keller frequently threw tantrums that included breaking dishes and even slapping and biting family members. When Helen, at age 6, tipped over the cradle holding her baby sister, Helen's parents knew something had to be done. Well-meaning friends suggested that she be institutionalized, but Helen's mother resisted that notion.

Soon after the incident with the cradle, Kate Keller read a book by Charles Dickens about the education of Laura Bridgman. Laura was a deaf-blind girl who had been taught to communicate by the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. For the first time, the Kellers felt hopeful that Helen could be helped as well.

The Guidance of Alexander Graham Bell

During a visit to a Baltimore eye doctor in 1886, the Kellers received the same verdict they had heard before. Nothing could be done to restore Helen's eyesight. The doctor, however, advised the Kellers that Helen might benefit from a visit with the famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C.

Bell's mother and wife were deaf and he had devoted himself to improving life for the deaf, inventing several assistive devices for them. Bell and Helen Keller got along very well and would later develop a lifelong friendship.

Bell suggested that the Kellers write to the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where Laura Bridgman, now an adult, still resided. The director wrote the Kellers back, with the name of a teacher for Helen: Annie Sullivan .

Annie Sullivan Arrives

Helen Keller's new teacher had also lived through difficult times. Annie Sullivan had lost her mother to tuberculosis when she was 8. Unable to care for his children, her father sent Annie and her younger brother Jimmie to live in the poorhouse in 1876. They shared quarters with criminals, prostitutes, and the mentally ill.

Young Jimmie died of a weak hip ailment only three months after their arrival, leaving Annie grief-stricken. Adding to her misery, Annie was gradually losing her vision to trachoma, an eye disease. Although not completely blind, Annie had very poor vision and would be plagued with eye problems for the rest of her life.

When she was 14, Annie begged visiting officials to send her to school. She was lucky, for they agreed to take her out of the poorhouse and send her to the Perkins Institute. Annie had a lot of catching up to do. She learned to read and write, then later learned braille and the manual alphabet (a system of hand signs used by the deaf).

After graduating first in her class, Annie was given the job that would determine the course of her life: teacher to Helen Keller. Without any formal training to teach a deaf-blind child, 20-year-old Annie Sullivan arrived at the Keller home on March 3, 1887. It was a day that Helen Keller later referred to as "my soul's birthday."

A Battle of Wills

Teacher and pupil were both very strong-willed and frequently clashed. One of the first of these battles revolved around Helen's behavior at the dinner table, where she roamed freely and grabbed food from the plates of others.

Dismissing the family from the room, Annie locked herself in with Helen. Hours of struggle ensued, during which Annie insisted Helen eat with a spoon and sit in her chair.

In order to distance Helen from her parents, who gave in to her every demand, Annie proposed that she and Helen move out of the house temporarily. They spent about two weeks in the "annex," a small house on the Keller property. Annie knew that if she could teach Helen self-control, Helen would be more receptive to learning.

Helen fought Annie on every front, from getting dressed and eating to going to bed at night. Eventually, Helen resigned herself to the situation, becoming calmer and more cooperative.

Now the teaching could begin. Annie constantly spelled words into Helen's hand, using the manual alphabet to name the items she handed to Helen. Helen seemed intrigued but did not yet realize that what they were doing was more than a game.

Helen Keller's Breakthrough

On the morning of April 5, 1887, Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller were outside at the water pump, filling a mug with water. Annie pumped the water over Helen's hand while repeatedly spelling “w-a-t-e-r” into her hand. Helen suddenly dropped the mug. As Annie later described it, "a new light came into her face." She understood.

All the way back to the house, Helen touched objects and Annie spelled their names into her hand. Before the day was over, Helen had learned 30 new words. It was just the beginning of a very long process, but a door had been opened for Helen.

Annie also taught her how to write and how to read braille. By the end of that summer, Helen had learned more than 600 words. 

Annie Sullivan sent regular reports on Helen Keller's progress to the director of the Perkins Institute. On a visit to the Perkins Institute in 1888, Helen met other blind children for the first time. She returned to Perkins the following year and stayed for several months of study.

High School Years

Helen Keller dreamed of attending college and was determined to get into Radcliffe , a women's university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. However, she would first need to complete high school.

Helen attended a high school for the deaf in New York City, then later transferred to a school in Cambridge. She had her tuition and living expenses paid for by wealthy benefactors.

Keeping up with school work challenged both Helen and Annie. Copies of books in braille were rarely available, requiring that Annie read the books, then spell them into Helen's hand. Helen would then type out notes using her braille typewriter. It was a grueling process.

Helen withdrew from the school after two years, completing her studies with a private tutor. She gained admission to Radcliffe in 1900, making her the first deaf-blind person to attend college.

Life as a Coed

College was somewhat disappointing for Helen Keller. She was unable to form friendships both because of her limitations and the fact that she lived off campus, which further isolated her. The rigorous routine continued, in which Annie worked at least as much as Helen. As a result, Annie suffered severe eyestrain.

Helen found the courses very difficult and struggled to keep up with her workload. Although she detested math, Helen did enjoy English classes and received praise for her writing. Before long, she would be doing plenty of writing.

Editors from Ladies' Home Journal offered Helen $3,000, an enormous sum at the time, to write a series of articles about her life.

Overwhelmed by the task of writing the articles, Helen admitted she needed help. Friends introduced her to John Macy, an editor and English teacher at Harvard . Macy quickly learned the manual alphabet and began to work with Helen on editing her work.

Certain that Helen's articles could successfully be turned into a book, Macy negotiated a deal with a publisher and "The Story of My Life" was published in 1903 when Helen was only 22 years old. Helen graduated from Radcliffe with honors in June 1904.

Annie Sullivan Marries John Macy

John Macy remained friends with Helen and Annie after the book's publication. He found himself falling in love with Annie Sullivan, although she was 11 years his senior. Annie had feelings for him as well, but wouldn't accept his proposal until he assured her that Helen would always have a place in their home. They were married in May 1905 and the trio moved into a farmhouse in Massachusetts.

The pleasant farmhouse was reminiscent of the home Helen had grown up in. Macy arranged a system of ropes out in the yard so that Helen could safely take walks by herself. Soon, Helen was at work on her second memoir, "The World I Live In," with John Macy as her editor.

By all accounts, although Helen and Macy were close in age and spent a lot of time together, they were never more than friends.

An active member of the Socialist Party, John Macy encouraged Helen to read books on socialist and communist theory. Helen joined the Socialist Party in 1909 and she also supported the women's suffrage movement .

Helen's third book, a series of essays defending her political views, did poorly. Worried about their dwindling funds, Helen and Annie decided to go on a lecture tour.

Helen and Annie Go on the Road

Helen had taken speaking lessons over the years and had made some progress, but only those closest to her could understand her speech. Annie would need to interpret Helen's speech for the audience.

Another concern was Helen's appearance. She was very attractive and always well dressed, but her eyes were obviously abnormal. Unbeknownst to the public, Helen had her eyes surgically removed and replaced by prosthetic ones prior to the start of the tour in 1913.

Prior to this, Annie made certain that the photographs were always taken of Helen's right profile because her left eye protruded and was obviously blind, whereas Helen appeared almost normal on the right side.

The tour appearances consisted of a well-scripted routine. Annie spoke about her years with Helen and then Helen spoke, only to have Annie interpret what she had said. At the end, they took questions from the audience. The tour was successful, but exhausting for Annie. After taking a break, they went back on tour two more times.

Annie's marriage suffered from the strain as well. She and John Macy separated permanently in 1914. Helen and Annie hired a new assistant, Polly Thomson, in 1915, in an effort to relieve Annie of some of her duties.

Helen Finds Love

In 1916, the women hired Peter Fagan as a secretary to accompany them on their tour while Polly was out of town. After the tour, Annie became seriously ill and was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

While Polly took Annie to a rest home in Lake Placid, plans were made for Helen to join her mother and sister Mildred in Alabama. For a brief time, Helen and Peter were alone together at the farmhouse, where Peter confessed his love for Helen and asked her to marry him.

The couple tried to keep their plans a secret, but when they traveled to Boston to obtain a marriage license, the press obtained a copy of the license and published a story about Helen's engagement.

Kate Keller was furious and brought Helen back to Alabama with her. Although Helen was 36 years old at the time, her family was very protective of her and disapproved of any romantic relationship.

Several times, Peter attempted to reunite with Helen, but her family would not let him near her. At one point, Mildred's husband threatened Peter with a gun if he did not get off his property.

Helen and Peter were never together again. Later in life, Helen described the relationship as her "little island of joy surrounded by dark waters."

The World of Showbiz

Annie recovered from her illness, which had been misdiagnosed as tuberculosis, and returned home. With their financial difficulties mounting, Helen, Annie, and Polly sold their house and moved to Forest Hills, New York in 1917.

Helen received an offer to star in a film about her life, which she readily accepted. The 1920 movie, "Deliverance," was absurdly melodramatic and did poorly at the box office.

In dire need of a steady income, Helen and Annie, now 40 and 54 respectively, next turned to vaudeville. They reprised their act from the lecture tour, but this time they did it in glitzy costumes and full stage makeup, alongside various dancers and comedians.

Helen enjoyed the theater, but Annie found it vulgar. The money, however, was very good and they stayed in vaudeville until 1924.

American Foundation for the Blind

That same year, Helen became involved with an organization that would employ her for much of the rest of her life. The newly-formed American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) sought a spokesperson and Helen seemed the perfect candidate.

Helen Keller drew crowds whenever she spoke in public and became very successful at raising money for the organization. Helen also convinced Congress to approve more funding for books printed in braille.

Taking time off from her duties at the AFB in 1927, Helen began work on another memoir, "Midstream," which she completed with the help of an editor.

Losing 'Teacher' and Polly

Annie Sullivan's health deteriorated over several years' time. She became completely blind and could no longer travel, leaving both women entirely reliant on Polly. Annie Sullivan died in October 1936 at the age of 70. Helen was devastated to have lost the woman whom she had known only as "Teacher," and who had given so much to her.

After the funeral, Helen and Polly took a trip to Scotland to visit Polly's family. Returning home to a life without Annie was difficult for Helen. Life was made easier when Helen learned that she would be taken care of financially for life by the AFB, which built a new home for her in Connecticut.

Helen continued her travels around the world through the 1940s and 1950s accompanied by Polly, but the women, now in their 70s, began to tire of travel.

In 1957, Polly suffered a severe stroke. She survived, but had brain damage and could no longer function as Helen's assistant. Two caretakers were hired to come and live with Helen and Polly. In 1960, after spending 46 years of her life with Helen, Polly Thomson died.

Later Years

Helen Keller settled into a quieter life, enjoying visits from friends and her daily martini before dinner. In 1960, she was intrigued to learn of a new play on Broadway that told the dramatic story of her early days with Annie Sullivan. "The Miracle Worker" was a smash hit and was made into an equally popular movie in 1962.

Strong and healthy all of her life, Helen became frail in her 80s. She suffered a stroke in 1961 and developed diabetes.

On June 1, 1968, Helen Keller died in her home at the age of 87 following a heart attack. Her funeral service, held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., was attended by 1,200 mourners.

Helen Keller was a groundbreaker in her personal and public lives. Becoming a writer and lecturer with Annie while blind and deaf was an enormous accomplishment. Helen Keller was the first deaf-blind individual to earn a college degree.

She was an advocate for communities of people with disabilities in many ways, raising awareness through her lecture circuits and books and raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. Her political work included helping to found the American Civil Liberties Union and advocacy for increased funding for braille books and for women's suffrage.

She met with every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon Johnson. While she was still alive, in 1964, Helen received the highest honor awarded to a U.S. citizen, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Lyndon Johnson .

Helen Keller remains a source of inspiration to all people for her enormous courage overcoming the obstacles of being both deaf and blind and for her ensuing life of humanitarian selfless service.

• Herrmann, Dorothy. Helen Keller: A Life. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
• Keller, Helen. Midstream: My Later Life . Nabu Press, 2011.
• Julia Ward Howe Biography
• Top 100 Women of History
• June Themes, Holiday Activities, and Events for Elementary Students
• Helen Keller Quotes
• Act 1 Plot Summary of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons"
• Biography of Sharpshooter Annie Oakley
• Life and Work of Anni Albers, Master of Modernist Weaving
• Helen of Troy in the Iliad of Homer
• Teaching Students Identified with Interpersonal Intelligence
• Biography of Hilda Doolittle, Poet, Translator, and Memoirist
• Biography of Patricia Bath, American Doctor and Inventor
• Biography of Annie Jump Cannon, Classifier of Stars
• Annie Besant, Heretic
• April Writing Prompts
• Helen Pitts Douglass
• Overview of the Children of Helen of Troy

Helen Keller's Books, Essays, and Speeches

"Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses distracts me from my book friends' sweet, gracious discourse. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness." -- The Story of My Life , 1902

Helen Keller saw herself as a writer first and foremost—her passport listed her profession as "author." It was through the typewritten word that Helen communicated with Americans and ultimately with thousands across the globe.

From an early age, she championed the underdog's rights and used her writing skills to speak truth to power. A pacifist, she protested U.S. involvement in World War I . A committed socialist, she took up the cause of workers' rights. She was also a tireless advocate for women's suffrage and an early American Civil Liberties Union member.

Helen Keller wrote 14 books and over 475 speeches and essays on topics such as faith, blindness prevention, birth control, the rise of fascism in Europe, and atomic energy. Her autobiography has been translated into 50 languages and remains in print.

The books, essays, and speeches you can read here are a sampling of Helen Keller's writings in the collection.

Helen Keller

Undeterred by deafness and blindness, Helen Keller rose to become a major 20 th century humanitarian, educator and writer. She advocated for the blind and for women’s suffrage and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.

Born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller was the older of two daughters of Arthur H. Keller, a farmer, newspaper editor, and Confederate Army veteran, and his second wife Katherine Adams Keller, an educated woman from Memphis. Several months before Helen’s second birthday, a serious illness – possibly meningitis or scarlet fever – left her deaf and blind. She had no formal education until age seven, and since she could not speak, she developed a system for communicating with her family by feeling their facial expressions.

Recognizing her daughter’s intelligence, Keller’s mother sought help from experts including inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who had become involved with deaf children. Ultimately, she was referred to Anne Sullivan, a graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, who became Keller’s lifelong teacher and mentor. Although Helen initially resisted her, Sullivan persevered. She used touch to teach Keller the alphabet and to make words by spelling them with her finger on Keller’s palm. Within a few weeks, Keller caught on. A year later, Sullivan brought Keller to the Perkins School in Boston, where she learned to read Braille and write with a specially made typewriter. Newspapers chronicled her progress. At fourteen, she went to New York for two years where she improved her speaking ability, and then returned to Massachusetts to attend the Cambridge School for Young Ladies. With Sullivan’s tutoring, Keller was admitted to Radcliffe College, graduating cum laude in 1904. Sullivan went with her, helping Keller with her studies. (Impressed by Keller, Mark Twain urged his wealthy friend Henry Rogers, financed her education.)

Even before she graduated, Keller published two books, The Story of My Life (1902) and Optimism (1903), which launched her career as a writer and lecturer. She authored a dozen books and articles in major magazines, advocating for prevention of blindness in children and for other causes.  

Sullivan married Harvard instructor and social critic John Macy in 1905, and Keller lived with them. During that time, Keller’s political awareness heightened. She supported the suffrage movement, embraced socialism, advocated for the blind and became a pacifist during World War I. Keller’s life story was featured in the 1919 film, Deliverance . In 1920, she joined Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman and other social activists in founding the American Civil Liberties Union; four years later she became affiliated with the new American Foundation for the Blind in 1924.

After Sullivan’s death in 1936, Keller continued to lecture internationally with the support of other aides, and she became one of the world’s most-admired women (though her advocacy of socialism brought her some critics domestically). During World War II, she toured military hospitals bringing comfort to soldiers.

A second film on her life won the Academy Award in 1955; The Miracle Worker -- which centered on Sullivan -- won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize as a play and was made into a movie two years later. Lifelong activist, Keller met several U.S. presidents and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. She also received honorary doctorates from Glasgow, Harvard, and Temple Universities.

Edited by Debra Michals, Ph.D.

• “Helen Keller.” Perkins. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• “Helen Keller.” American Foundation for the Blind. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• "Helen Adams Keller." Dictionary of American Biography . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988. U.S. History in Context . Accessed February 4, 2015.
• "Keller, Helen." UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History . Sonia Benson, Daniel E. Brannen, Jr., and Rebecca Valentine. Vol. 5. Detroit: UXL, 2009. 847-849. U.S. History in Context . Accessed February 4, 2015.
• Ozick, Cynthia. “What Helen Keller Saw.” The New Yorker. June 16, 2003. Accessed February 4, 2015.
• Weatherford, Doris. American Women's History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events . New York: Prentice Hall, 1994.
• PHOTO: Library of Congress

MLA - Michals, Debra.  "Helen Keller."  National Women's History Museum.  National Women's History Museum, 2015.  Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra.  "Helen Keller."  National Women's History Museum.  2015.  www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/helen-keller. 

Helen Keller: Described and Captioned Educational Media

Helen Keller Biography, American Foundation for the Blind

Helen Keller, Perkins School for the Blind

Helen Keller Birthplace

Helen Keller International

 The Miracle Worker (1962). Dir. Arthur Penn. (DVD) Film.

The Miracle Worker (2000). Dir. Nadia Tass. (DVD) Film.

Keller, Helen. The World I Live In . New York: NYRB Classics, 2004.

Ford, Carin.  Helen Keller: Lighting the Way for the Blind and Deaf .  Enslow Publishers, 2001.

Herrmann, Dorothy.  Helen Keller: A Life .  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Related Biographies

Abigail smith adams, jane addams, susan brownell anthony, josephine baker, related background, the extraordinary relevance of girl's schools, why are so many teachers women, woman's suffrage timeline, march on washington for jobs and freedom.

Helen Keller would not be bound by conditions. Rendered deaf and blind at 19 months by scarlet fever, she learned to read (in several languages) and even speak, eventually graduating with honors from Radcliffe College in 1904, where as a student she wrote The Story of My Life. That she accomplished all of this in an age when few women attended college and the disabled were often relegated to the background, spoken of only in hushed tones, is remarkable. But Keller's many other achievements are impressive by any standard: she authored 13 books, wrote countless articles, and devoted her life to social reform. An active and effective suffragist, pacifist, and socialist (the latter association earned her an FBI file), she lectured on behalf of disabled people everywhere. She also helped start several foundations that continue to improve the lives of the deaf and blind around the world.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• Classics Club
• eBook Challenge 2014
• TBR Pile 2014

October 23, 2014 at 12:26 pm

I remember stumbling upon this book when I was reading the “www” trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. The protagonist is blind and Helen Keller is an inspirational figure to her. At the time, I check “The Story of my Life” at the library and read the few first pages. I liked it. I really need to find time to read it all!

October 23, 2014 at 2:14 pm

Wow, what an amazing book. I would also love to write book reviews the way Helen Keller did. So beautiful.

May 1, 2020 at 12:51 am

yes this book change my life one day i am also riting a book about my life thank you helen keller to give this beautyful book to us…….

October 23, 2014 at 5:11 pm

I love this book!

September 25, 2017 at 10:45 pm

I just loved the book , it inspire me to a great extent I will always thank helean keller for inspiring me…..

May 20, 2018 at 2:40 am

October 25, 2014 at 4:48 pm

I love the list of books she read! So awesome! I read this when I was in middle school but it would be fun to read again!

June 5, 2015 at 9:43 am

i luv the way of describing the nature and how helen struggled in her life.the book was jst awsm that i ever read………

June 4, 2016 at 8:30 pm

And I’m read is book for my school project.

June 6, 2015 at 2:18 am

i have read this book this book is very infuensive .helen keller have influnced many like her

June 6, 2015 at 5:54 am

Well! I had an project of english on review of “the story of my life” just before i was thinking oh! Such a boring novel because i was not having an idea but i don’t know how but the way i started reading ,my eyes filled with tears because i have a elder sister who is deaf , i can understand how ridiculous how tough the life is when you are not even able to listen . And so, i so damn love this novel , :)

June 9, 2015 at 6:11 am

I like this book so much…..!!!!!

June 24, 2015 at 2:38 am

I love this book. Its amazing.

June 30, 2015 at 6:42 am

I read this book with pleasure and I have fall in the love of story and its help in English project

August 9, 2015 at 2:07 pm

it is an awesome book!

October 26, 2015 at 9:03 am

My favourite book

January 13, 2016 at 10:51 am

This was such an inspiring novel……it taught me that we need to be optimstic!!

May 28, 2016 at 10:36 pm

I had read this book and I love this book very much

June 4, 2016 at 8:27 pm

This novel was inspiring. This novel was awesome and it is my favorite book.

June 14, 2016 at 6:22 am

THIS BOOK IS VERY INSPIRING. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

June 21, 2016 at 4:53 am

Its too interseting ……i love this book…

June 29, 2016 at 5:44 am

i just love it…..

June 30, 2016 at 7:25 am

Nice book which touch my heart

July 17, 2016 at 6:04 am

Love this book ..

August 16, 2016 at 5:03 am

Good and awesome novel!!!!

August 16, 2016 at 7:35 am

Its one of my fav books

September 8, 2016 at 5:15 am

this is a so beautiful book. i like it.

October 21, 2016 at 7:45 am

This is very best

January 31, 2017 at 9:12 am

awesome…….

June 10, 2017 at 5:41 am

It’s a very nice book

June 11, 2017 at 6:53 am

I love the way of describing the nature and how Helen struggled in her life. The book was just awesome and I can read it every time……

September 23, 2017 at 4:51 am

awsome book for the future generations

May 18, 2018 at 2:36 am

I love this novel

June 20, 2018 at 12:40 am

July 4, 2018 at 3:05 am

I like this book so much….

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

email subscription

• Current Affairs

A Magazine of Politics and Culture

• Issues Archive
• News Briefing
• There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

‘The Miracle Worker’ Tells a Surprisingly Bold and Liberatory Story about Helen Keller

How the 1962 film about Helen Keller is not the sanitized, ableist depiction we might assume.

• Ciara Moloney

The Miracle Worker is something of a middle school staple in the United States. Helen Keller is a significant figure in American history—she was the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor’s degree and a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, among other things—and the 1962 film offers an accessible way into her story. But when something’s a middle school staple, you inevitably tend to continue viewing it through your middle school eyes, no matter how the years pass. It can take so much to let go of that—even though, if pushed, none of us would have trouble admitting that we were really stupid when we were 13. 

I’m from Ireland, where The Miracle Worker doesn’t have that kind of cultural cache, but I’ve spent enough of my life online to absorb it by osmosis. For American leftists in particular—eager to reassert Helen Keller’s socialism, since that doesn’t seem to come up in middle school— The Miracle Worker is almost a bogeyman. The more I learned about Helen Keller, the more it seemed like people talking about her life and work were actively countering The Miracle Worker , sometimes explicitly. The Miracle Worker is the official Helen Keller story, sanitized and shrink-wrapped for moral majority suburbanites, a reduction of a complex, trailblazing woman. For disability activists, it’s invoked the way Rain Man is by autistics: this is how they see us, this is what we are understood to be . 

So when I watched The Miracle Worker , I had a very strong impression of what to expect. If nothing else, the title seemed to give the game away. I thought Helen would be a simplistic flatline of a character meant to inspire an abled audience. That, in turn, her teacher Anne Sullivan’s vision impairment would be glossed over or erased entirely, positioning her as the Heroic Abled Person “saving” Helen. That it would embody, if not create, so many of the tropes of how disabled people are represented on screen: designed primarily to make those of us who can see and hear feel “grateful” not to be otherwise. 

Not only was I dead wrong, but pretty much the opposite is true.

The Miracle Worker , adapted by William Gibson from his play of the same name, opens when Helen is 6 months old. She has recovered from a serious illness, and the doctor says she’ll be okay as he leaves. It’s Helen’s mother who notices something is wrong when Helen doesn’t respond to her name. 

The bulk of the movie takes place when Helen is 6 or 7 years old. Though Patty Duke, who originated the role on stage, should be, at 16, too old to play Keller, it works. She throws herself into the role with remarkable conviction and zero vanity, delivering a huge, hideous performance that I am certain must have been an influence on Linda Blair’s possessed little girl in The Exorcist . 

If that sounds like an odd comparison, let me be clear: Helen is a brat. Of course she’s a brat. Helen has no way of communicating with the outside world—she has some “home signs” understood by her family, like a sign for her mother, but no language, whether spoken, written, or signed. So the main form of communication she has is screaming and throwing tantrums and hitting out. Her father ignores Helen and her brother belittles her, both essentially dismissing her as more nuisance than human being. Her mother, meanwhile, loves her with a pitying love, unwilling to deny her anything when she has already been denied sight and sound. Between them, Helen becomes a spoiled tyrant. She smacks her parents without consequences. They let her grab food off their dinner plates with her hands to avoid telling her no (her mom) and in the hopes of getting some peace and quiet (her dad). 

While writer Elsa Sjunneson (herself deafblind) criticizes this portrayal as presenting disability as something “ scary and disturbing ,” to me, it’s a shocking and effective counter to the rhetorical tendency to treat disabled children as angels walking the Earth. It still feels genuinely audacious 60 years later.

While depicting disability itself as scary is a definite problem in the media, Helen’s behavior is clearly not a result of her disability—it’s the result of ableism. Helen is allowed to get away with things that no hearing or seeing child would. The Kellers set the bar low for her, on the expectation that the bar can never be low enough for her to get over. There’s no point in trying to get her to sit at the dinner table with her family, or to stop hitting other people, or wear her clothes properly. Both Keller parents fundamentally underestimate Helen’s capabilities. She is so clearly intelligent, played with whip-smart wiliness by Duke, yet she is assumed to be intellectually disabled. Doctors encourage the Kellers to have her admitted to an asylum. Helen’s mother refuses to acquiesce, contacting the Perkins School for the Blind in the hope that they can help. 

The school sends Anne Sullivan: not, as the Kellers had hoped, one of the school’s teachers, but one of its recent graduates. “Another invalid to take care of,” Helen’s brother sneers. 

Anne, played by Anne Bancroft in dark glasses, was valedictorian. Her flashbacks are out of focus, mimicking her impaired eyesight. An Irish Catholic orphan in a Northern city, she grew up in one of the asylums that Helen’s doctor recommended: Tewksbury Almshouse in Massachusetts. She and her brother with the disabled leg used to play with rats. The children and adults were all on top of one another, and sexual abuse was rampant—Anne tells Helen’s mother about a baby who had “diseases no baby is supposed to have.” The film doesn’t embellish this—if anything, the full horrors of the Tewskbury Almshouse are played down. (The investigation into the institution received a report of a dead patient being skinned and the skin being tanned into leather .) Anne’s backstory casts Helen’s life—hitting her parents with impunity, growing up in a Southern aristocratic family who, even if the movie never says it aloud, obviously owned slaves (and are vocally nostalgic for the Confederacy)—in a very different light. Instead of pitying her, you realize she is comparatively privileged. 

Anne’s vision impairment makes the Kellers nervous, like it makes her less capable, but it is in fact what makes her uniquely qualified for the job. She is capable of love without pity, of frustration without dismissiveness. How can she feel sorry for Helen when Helen has so much more than she ever did?

Helen smacks Anne so hard she knocks one of her teeth out.

From there on out, most of the film is this ongoing mental—and sometimes physical—tussle between Helen and Anne. It’s a sleek showcase for two brave and revelatory central performances, for which Duke and Bancroft rightly both won Oscars. Anne refuses to be subject to Helen’s tyrannical whims, and so takes on the Nanny 911 role of teaching her some manners. At one point, there’s a nearly 10-minute fight scene between Anne and Helen, and it’s one of the best scenes in cinema. Arthur Penn, who would go on to direct New Hollywood milestone Bonnie and Clyde , made a lot of violent movies, but this scene might be the most visceral, the most savage and wild. Anne wrestles with Helen to try to get her to eat with a spoon. By the fight’s end, Helen has eaten her food and folded her napkin—and the entire room has been destroyed. Helen is dogged; Anne is ruthless. Bancroft and Duke reportedly needed to go to the hospital after filming. 

The scene is uncomfortable in the best way art can be: it challenges you, forces you to live without easy resolution. The fight scene is funny, frustrating, scary, shocking, hopeful, joyous: the whole movie in microcosm.

All the while—even during the fight—Anne is constantly at her true work, the thing she came to do: teach Helen language. She finger-spells everything for her. It’s the same way you talk to a baby, Anne explains to Helen’s mother. You know they don’t understand, but you keep at it until, eventually, the words and what they refer to click together. At a certain point, Anne begins to despair: Helen’s behavior has improved, but she can only mimic Anne’s fingerspelling, “monkey see, monkey do” (as Helen later put it). Helen’s parents are pleased, but for Anne, obedience on its own is no gift at all. She wants Helen to have the ability to communicate. For words and meaning to finally click. It ultimately does in the film’s most famous scene, when Anne finger-spells W-A-T-E-R, signifying the water she can feel running from the tap. It’s a realization we probably all make as babies, but don’t remember. Helen, deprived of language until the age of 6, goes through that realization at an old enough age to remember it forever. It’s incredible. It plays with the punch-the-air thrill of the climax of a sports movie, but with a deafblind girl learning language instead of Rocky going the distance against the heavyweight champ. (It’s the same basic idea. Helen is in training the whole movie, and after all, she is the ultimate underdog.) 

Nothing about it feels sanitized or shrink-wrapped. It feels bold and uncompromising. It feels, for me, politically incisive: its disability politics are liberatory. There can be a tendency to assume representation of minority groups has continually gotten better over time. This assumption leads to preemptive dismissal of older representations. Even if it’s true in some narrow ways, the accompanying dismissal is nevertheless, as David Byrne once wrote about music improving over time, “typical of the high self-regard of those who live in the present.” In The Miracle Worker , there is, crucially, no abled hero, like in Johnny Belinda , Radio , or Me Before You . It’s not the disability equivalent of Sandra Bullock saving a Black kid in The Blind Side . It’s a vision-impaired woman teaching a deafblind child. Anne is underestimated precisely because she’s a young disabled woman, and she succeeds in no small part because she is a young disabled woman. I dislike the title The Miracle Worker —it seems to elide the film’s complexity in favour of an ironed-out inspirational narrative—but it amazes me, still, that that hokey sounding title refers to a disabled woman. That she earns the title not by being an angel upon the earth, but by being a goddamn professional determined to see things through. 

And inside that story about disability, there’s a clear class narrative that subtly calls ahead to Helen Keller’s socialist activism. Anne and Helen are both extraordinary people. They were both disabled from infancy. They both succeed in leaps and bounds when given appropriate education. But only Anne was institutionalized. Only Anne was thrown away like a sack of rubbish, left to fend for herself in hell. Helen isn’t fully insulated by her class position—that asshole doctor keeps suggesting the asylum, after all—but Anne faced the brunt of society’s ableism at its most violent and most horrific. And there are surely dozens of disabled kids as whip-smart and bright as Helen hidden away in institutions all over the country—not one of whom will get the miracle they deserve. 

More In: Media

The nicholas kristof theory of social change.

• Nathan J. Robinson

The Bourgeois Morality of ‘The Ethicist’

• Alex Skopic & Lily Sánchez & Nathan J. Robinson

You Don’t Have to Publish Every Point of View

Islamophobia will poison this country.

• Alex Skopic & Nathan J. Robinson

Announcing Our Newest Issue

A wonderful spring issue touching on important issues such as child liberation, whether humans really love animals, why Puerto Rico's political status remains a problem, what Islamic finance can teach us, and how 'terrorism' has become a shape-shifting word. Welcome to the Manos-Fair, and enjoy Luxury British Pants, among other delightful amusements!

The Latest From Current Affairs

The Possibilities for Child Liberation

• Lauren Fadiman

Is Jeff Landry the Worst Governor in America?

• Alex Skopic

Trump’s Worst Crimes Remain Unpunished

The Toxic Legacy of Martin Peretz’s New Republic

45 Helen Keller Quotes on Life, Faith and Happiness

H elen Keller was a famous lecturer, author, activist and educator who advocated for underprivileged individuals, such as women, people with disabilities and African Americans. So, it's no wonder that  Helen Keller’s quotes are often profound and optimistic , ranging from topics like education and nature to love and dogs.

Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880, and she became deaf and blind at 19 months old due to an illness. Keller’s mother sought medical advice for Helen’s condition and was eventually referred to Alexander Graham Bell because, at the time, he worked with deaf children. Graham recommended that the Keller family visit the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts.

It was at Perkins where Keller met Anne Sullivan, the tutor she would work with for 49 years. Sullivan was partially blind, but she taught Keller how to spell by signing the alphabet in her hand until Keller learned all the letters. One of their most notable experiences was when Sullivan spelled “w-a-t-e-r” in one of Keller’s hands, while her other hand felt the cool water from a water spout. Keller went on to complete formal speech classes and learn braille and the art of manual lip-reading.

With assistance from Sullivan, Keller graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1904. She even published her autobiography, The Story of My Life , in 1903. While she may be known for her loss of sight and incredible life, Keller was passionate about raising awareness for causes such as women’s suffrage and the labor movement. In 1924, The American Federation for the Blind designated Keller as their official spokeswoman.

Here are 45 Helen Keller quotes that reflect her varied life experiences and passions.

Related:  45 Carl Jung Quotes on Life, Wisdom and Perspective

45 Helen Keller Quotes

1. "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart."

2. "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

3. “Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss [Anne] Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister’s hand.”

4. "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

5. "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

6. "Nobody, who is not blind, as much as they may love their pet, can know what a dog’s love really means. Dogs have traveled all over the world with me. They have always been my companions. A dog has never failed me."

7. "The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision."

8. "Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow."

9. "What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."

10. "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."

11. "The highest result of education is tolerance."

12. "What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self."

13. "I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!"

14. "We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world."

15. "I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."

Related:  55 Socrates Quotes on Philosophy, Education and Life

16. "What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me."

17. "The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome."

18. "We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough."

19. "True happiness... is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

20. "No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."

21. "Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."

22. "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."

23. "Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight."

24. "The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it."

25. "Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap."

26. "Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others."

27. "So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good."

28. "Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities."

29. "If I write what my soul thinks it will be visible, and the words will be its body."

Related:  75 Stoic Quotes from Philosophers of Stoicism About Life, Happiness and Wisdom

30. "Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow."

31. "Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

32. "The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker."

33. "Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light."

34. "Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world."

35. "We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough."

36. "I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God."

37. "Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow."

Related:  50 Aristotle Quotes on Philosophy, Virtue and Education

38. "A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn."

39. "The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it."

40. "No one has the right to consume happiness without producing it."

41. "I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence."

42. "Every child has a right to be well-born, well-nurtured and well-taught, and only the freedom of woman can guarantee him this right."

43. "We are never really happy until we try to brighten the lives of others."

44. "Four things to learn in life: To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly."

45. "Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same."

Next:  From 'Narnia' to Wormwood to 'The Four Loves'—Here Are 125 of the Best C.S. Lewis Quotes

DeafBlind Awareness Week 2024

What is deafblind awareness week.

In recognition of the achievements of people who are DeafBlind, the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths & Adults (HKNC) celebrates the last week in June as “DeafBlind Awareness Week.”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of this national advocacy campaign which has been held each year since 1984 when then-President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation in recognition of this special week.  The purpose of DeafBlind Awareness Week is to raise public awareness about individuals who have combined hearing and vision loss.

In 2024, we will celebrate Helen Keller DeafBlind Awareness Week from June 23rd to June 30th. This year’s campaign focuses on the diverse journeys and shared aspirations of DeafBlind individuals and how HKNC partners with them as they navigate life’s pathways towards greater independence, meaningful employment, and achieving their personal milestones. Through personalized support and specialized training, HKNC equips DeafBlind individuals with the skills and confidence needed to overcome barriers and embrace opportunities. Whether it’s mastering new technologies, honing communication techniques, or developing vocational skills, HKNC’s comprehensive programs are designed to address the unique challenges faced by the DeafBlind community.

Our 2024 poster features a former HKNC participant, Kahlyn, portraying a young graduate embracing her opportunities as she looks to the future.  It underscores that while our journeys may differ, our aspirations unite us.

Poster Description

A DeafBlind Awareness Week poster showing a woman in a blue graduation cap and gown smiling into the distance, holding a white cane, and wearing sunglasses. Above her are 5 illustrated icons representing themes such as becoming a teacher, traveling, starting a family, higher education, and owning a home. Underneath the woman there are big words that say “Diverse Journeys, Shared Aspirations.” In smaller letters beneath that are words that say “HKNC partners with DeafBlind individuals as they navigate life’s pathways towards greater independence, meaningful employment, and achieving their personal milestones.” On the bottom left of the poster is a QR code that goes to helenkeller.org.  On the bottom right of the poster is the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults logo.

Audio of Poster Description

Join us in celebrating deafblind awareness week, 1. learn about the deafblind community.

Being DeafBlind refers to an individual who has combined hearing and vison loss. At Helen Keller National Center (HKNC), we believe that education is essential to understanding the challenges and celebrating the accomplishments of DeafBlind individuals.

Explore HKNC’s many free resources, including DeafBlind Culture and Guidelines for Respectful Interactions with DeafBlind Individuals in our online Resource Center . Understanding the unique experiences and cultural nuances of DeafBlind individuals is crucial for fostering inclusive environments. Learning how to approach, communicate, and interact with DeafBlind individuals ensures that these interactions are respectful and conducive to full and equal participation. These resources as well as other courses can be found in our Learning Center . 

HKNC is the only national agency that provides information, referrals, support, and a Comprehensive Vocational and Rehabilitation Program to DeafBlind youths and adults who have a combined hearing and vision loss. HKNC also provides support to the families and professionals who work with them.

2. Raise awareness online

During DeafBlind Awareness Week, we encourage you to raise awareness for inclusivity in the workplace by sharing our campaign graphic on social media. Use the hashtag #DBAW24, and tag @helenkellerservices.

Campaign Graphic Image Description

A DeafBlind Awareness Week poster showing a woman in a blue graduation cap and gown smiling into the distance, holding a white cane, and wearing sunglasses. Above her are 5 illustrated icons representing themes such as becoming a teacher, traveling, starting a family, higher education, and owning a home. Underneath the woman there are big words that say “Diverse Journeys, Shared Aspirations.” In smaller letters beneath that are words that say “HKNC partners with DeafBlind individuals as they navigate life’s pathways towards greater independence, meaningful employment, and achieving their personal milestones.” On the bottom left of the poster is a link to HelenKeller.org/DBAW. On the bottom right of the poster is the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults logo.

3. Learn how to make the internet more accessible

At Helen Keller National Center (HKNC), we believe that everyone is entitled to equal access in digital spaces, and we are committed to promoting digital accessibility for all. Making the internet more accessible for everyone, including those who are DeafBlind, is a top priority here at HKNC.

Whether you’re looking to make your company’s website more accessible or simply interested in promoting digital inclusion, strategies and best practices such as adding alt text to images, using headings on webpages, and providing video transcripts will prevent accessibility errors and make the internet more accessible for all.

At HKNC, we believe that digital accessibility is essential to creating a more inclusive and equitable world, and we’re here to help you make it happen.

4. Write to your local legislator

Write to your local legislator – Congressperson, Mayor, Governor, Town Supervisor or other elected official. Ask for a Proclamation declaring June 23 to June 30, 2024 as DeafBlind Awareness Week.

5. Host a panel

Consider hosting a panel for DeafBlind individuals to share their perspectives and journey.

6. Read Success Stories from individuals who are DeafBlind

Discover the transformative journeys of numerous DeafBlind individuals who have acquired invaluable skills, enabling them to enhance their independence, integrate into the workforce, and cultivate self-assurance through their participation in Helen Keller National Center’s vocational and rehabilitation programs.

For further information, contact Helen Keller National Center’s Development Department:

• Address: 141 Middle Neck Road, Sands Point, New York, 11050
• Phone (Voice): 516-944-8900, ext.1299
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.helenkeller.org/hknc

A unique and lasting tribute for a loved one

Prepare a personalized obituary for someone you loved..

Hedwig “Hedy” Keller

September 12, 1926 - June 2, 2024 (97 years old)

Red Wing , Minnesota

Funeral arrangement under the care of Mahn Family Funeral and Cremation Services

Hedwig “Hedy” Keller

Send Flowers

Share your support

Light a candle

Illuminate their memory

Are you a family member?

Echovita offers a solidarity program that gives back the funds generated to families.

Hedwig Keller Obituary

With solemn reverence, we commemorate Hedwig Keller of Red Wing, Minnesota, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose life came to an end on June 2, 2024 at the age of 97, leaving behind cherished memories. You can send your sympathy in the guestbook provided and share it with the family.

She was predeceased by : her parents, Ludwig Ploszay and Mary Ploszay (Wrzos); her husband Vernon Keller; and her siblings, Frank, Anthony, Steve, Lawrence, Agnes, Helen, Anne and Veronica.

She is survived by : her children, James Keller (Vernie) of Red Wing, Gregory Keller of Red Wing, Bernard Keller (Debbra) of Red Wing, Jeffrey Keller (Linda) of Red Wing, Jean Diercks (Gregg) of Red Wing and Deborah Althaus (John) of Hager City, Wisc.; her grandchildren, Joshua Knutson (Angela), Zachary Keller (Amanda), Matthew Keller (Carrie Bauer), Kendra Keller (Jon Smith), Angela Buell (Eddie), Melissa Berghammer (Matthew), Tyler Diercks (Jen Subra) and Emily Hubbard (Mark); and her stepgrandchildren, Jeff and Kristine Harden. She is also survived by 14 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be held on Saturday, June 8th 2024 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM at the Church of St. Joseph (435 W 7th St, Red Wing, MN 55066). A funeral service will be held on Saturday, June 8th 2024 at 11:00 AM at the same location.

Memorials are preferred to the church, Leo C. Peterson American Legion Auxiliary, or the Flower Basket Fund.

There's still time to send flowers to Hedwig Keller's service.

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Church of St. Joseph 435 W 7th St, Red Wing, MN 55066

Funeral service

Give a memorial tree

Plant a tree

Sympathy messages

Would you like to offer Hedwig Keller’s loved ones a condolence message? Write your message of sympathy today.

500 CHARACTERS

Add a photo or a video

There is no photo or video of Hedwig Keller. Be the first to share a memory to pay tribute.

Edit picture

Authorize the original obituary

Authorize the publication of the original written obituary with the accompanying photo.

• Allow Hedwig Keller to be recognized more easily
• Increase the accessibility of loved ones to show you their sympathy

Receive obituaries from the city or cities of your choice.

Find answers to your questions

Guidance on Writing Sympathy Cards

The importance of saying "I love you" during COVID-19

Effective ways of dealing with the grieving process

Share guestbook to family

Send obituary by email.