Helen Keller signed our area registry

By David Maurer

Published: September 7, 2008

Charlottesville is one of those rare and remarkable places that seem to have a knack for attracting famous people.

On Jan. 5, 1940, who should pay a visit here but Helen Keller. The deaf and blind embodiment of inspiration for countless people was seen at the Monticello Hotel.

Keller, accompanied by an unidentified companion, picked up several letters at the hotel and sent a telegram. A hotel employee was told they were just passing through town but planned to visit Monticello.

An alerted reporter staked out Thomas Jefferson’s home, but failed to spot them. Nonetheless, Keller’s fame was such that the incident made front-page news in The Daily Progress.

Although Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Ala., on June 27, 1880, she had a strong tie to Virginia. She was related, on her father’s side of the family, to Alexander Spotswood, a Colonial lieutenant governor of the state.

Brain fever

Keller was a normal, healthy child until the age of 19 months, when she became critically ill with an undiagnosed sickness that doctors called “brain fever.” When she regained consciousness, it quickly became apparent that she was deaf and blind.

Being trapped in a dark, soundless world filled Helen with rage. She went on screaming rampages through the house, smashing and breaking every dish and lamp that came within her grasp.

Relatives pleaded with Keller’s parents to have her institutionalized before she did serious harm to herself or someone else. By the time she had reached the age of 6, her growing anger and strength were such that something had to be done.

American Notes

Help arrived via Charles Dickens’ book “American Notes,” in which the author writes about a deaf and blind girl who was helped by doctors in Baltimore. Reading this motivated Helen’s parents to take their unruly daughter to Baltimore and have her examined by specialists.

After examining the child, doctors said there was no chance she would ever hear or see again, but the situation wasn’t hopeless. They put the parents in touch with Alexander Graham Bell, who had dedicated himself to helping teach deaf children.

The inventor of the telephone put the couple in contact with Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind. It was through Anagnos efforts that Anne Sullivan, a former pupil of his, came into the troubled child’s life.

On March 3, 1887, Sullivan arrived at the Kellers’ home with the daunting task of somehow

helping the child break out of the silent darkness that held her captive. One of the first things she did was give her new student a doll that the children at the institution had made.

As soon as Helen grabbed the doll, Sullivan traced the letters d-o-l-l into the child’s hand. The child quickly learned to form letters herself, but was unable to comprehend that these patterns made words or even that there were such things as words.

Then on April 5, 1887, the world and all its promise opened up to Helen in a dramatic epiphany of understanding. Years later she would write that she and “teacher,” as she always called Sullivan, had been drawn to the family’s well-house by the heady fragrance of honeysuckle.

Sullivan worked the pump handle up and down a few times and when the cold water came out she put Helen’s little hand under the spout. At the same time Helen felt the water, Sullivan spelled the word “water” into her other hand.

In an instant, this perfect confluence of sensation and signals revealed to the child the meaning of words. As an adult, Keller described this moment of clarity when the veil was lifted from her consciousness.

“I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers,” Keller wrote. “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”

In the space of a few hours, Helen learned the names of more than 30 things. Her wondrous ability to learn quickly made people marvel.

In seemingly no time Sullivan was teaching Helen to read and write in Braille. Soon word of this gifted child had reached the White House, and the now well-mannered girl was invited for a visit with President Grover Cleveland.

The moment at the pump had filled Keller with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. With Sullivan’s help, Keller received a bachelor of arts cum laude from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass., in 1904.

With degree in hand, Keller began working tirelessly to help better the lives of all people throughout the world struggling with special challenges. Not long after her brief visit to Charlottesville, the nation was embroiled in World War II.

From 1943 to 1946, Keller did her part by visiting patients in military hospitals. She called this period the crowning experience of her life.

Keller’s life of achievement ended peacefully on June 1, 1968, when she died in her sleep at the age of 87 at her home in Westport, Conn. In addition to inspiring countless people, she authored several books and was the subject of the Oscar-generating 1962 film “The Miracle Worker.”

In 1999 Keller was named one of the most widely admired people of the 20th century in a Gallup poll. In 2003 her home state honored her by placing her portrait on its state quarter.

It would take pages to list all of Keller’s honors, awards and accomplishments. But perhaps the most heartfelt tribute bestowed upon her continues to this day.

The urn containing Keller’s ashes rests next to that of Sullivan in the National Cathedral in Washington. A nearby metal plaque bears a simple message in Braille that reads, “Helen Keller and her beloved companion Anne Sullivan Macy are interred in the columbarium behind this chapel.”

Over the years so many fingers have traced the raised Braille dots that the metal plaque has had to be replaced twice.