Helen Keller

Hi! 
Now I'm going to talk about Helen Keller. 




Helen Keller was a an American author, political activist, and lecturer who overcame the adversity of being blind and deaf to become one of the 20th century's most influential people, as well as founder of Hellen Keller International (HKI) organization.

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was the first of two daughters born to Arthur Keller and Katherine Adams Keller. She was born with the ability to see and hear and started speaking when she was just 6 months old. However, at 19 months old, she lost both her sight and hearing because of the an illness—called "brain fever" by the family doctor— some experts believe it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Since then, Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, taught Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand. 

 

In 1890, Helen began speech classes at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston and then she went to 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. Then, she attended Radcliffe College. She was accompanied by Sullivan, who sat by her side to interpret lectures and she graduated with cum laude at the age 24, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn Bachelor of Arts Degree.



Helen wrote her first book, "The Story of My Life" that told us the story of her transformation since childhood until then when she was 22 years old. She learned to speak with several methods of communications that includes touch-lip reading, Braille, speech, typing, and finger-spelling. She spent her life giving motivational speeches about her experiences including the deaf people's condition in order to improve the life of others and lectures that mentions political and social issues. She also founded the Helen Keller International organization that focuses on researching for preventing blindness and malnutrition.  

Helen died in her sleep on June 1, 1968 because of series of strokes she suffered. Her story with Anna Sullivan is described through "The Miracle Worker" film. Her birthday on June 27 is commemorated as "Helen Keller Day" in Pennsylvania and her birthplace in Alabama is now a museum.

The reason why I feature her on my blog is because she inspired me to be a better person and fight more for my dream. Although she was deaf, she could show us that having a disability wouldn't stop her to help others and change the world into the better place for everyone, including people with the same condition like her. She also taught that people with disabilities can do things that hearing people do or even better. Because of that, she became one of the most famous deaf people and is adored by many deaf people in the world.