Helen Keller

Overview

(Source: 3rd Grade Bio Cards)

HELEN KELLER was the first blind-deaf person to receive a college degree. Helen was a healthy baby when she was born but became sick with a high fever when she was two. After getting well, she could no longer see or hear. When Helen was six, her parents took her to several specialists. Alexander Graham Bell, who taught deaf children, suggested that they contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind. There they met a teacher named Anne Sullivan who came to live with the Keller family and began teaching Helen to finger spell. A whole new world was opened for Helen when she learned a signing vocabulary and to read Braille. Anne was Helen’s teacher and companion while she studied at Radcliffe College and even after her school years. As an adult, Helen tried to help people understand blind and deaf people. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.