Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia County in the US state of Alabama,on the twenty-seventh of June of the year 1880.
Helen Keller comes from prominent families in the state of New England her father was Colonel Arthur Keller, who served in the Confederate army, and her mother was Kate Adams.
It is worth noting the outbreak of a civil war in that period, as it left many negative effects on Helen's family, caused her to lose her money, which made her live a modest living.
Until her father opened a local newspaper in 1885, in the northern region of the Alabamian region, and then he was appointed to the post of general or marshal in the northern region of the city of Alabama.
Helen was a healthy and physically healthy child when she was born, until she contracted an unknown disease at the age of 19 months, which caused her to become blind and deaf, and it was said that the disease was scarlet fever, or rubella, and this led Helen to grow up to become a naughty and wild child.
Helen Keller's life and education
Alexander Graham Bell examined Helen when she was six years old, which made him interested in sending a special teacher named Anne Sullivan, from the Perkins Institute for the blind, located in the US state of Boston.
There, the teacher Anne began working with Helen in March of 1887, and continued with her until she died in October of 1936, knowing that Anne Sullivan was the daughter of poor immigrants from Ireland, and she was suffering from vision problems, where she performed many unsuccessful operations, until she was able to restore part of her eyesight, and although Anne
is only fourteen years older than Helen, she succeeded with her amazingly and exceptionally, as she taught her obedience and politeness at first, and then asked her parents to move from the main house; until she lives with her in a country house, they lived there for two weeks, At first, Helen learned the manual things, then she learned the spelling of letters, connecting them, and Helen's response was quick in arranging the letters, forming them appropriately, as she learned to spell many words that way.
In 1890, Helen Keller joined the Horace school for speech lessons for the deaf, and then went to a special school for the deaf named Wright homason located in New York City, where she learned better communication skills and studied academic subjects.
In 1896, Helen Keller was determined to enter the university, so she enrolled in the Cambridge Preparatory School for girls, and over time, Helen's story became well known, which helped her to get to know many celebrities, including the famous writer Mark Twain, who introduced her to his friend Henry Roger, one of the administrators at Standard Oil, where he helped her to enroll in Radcliffe College and pay for her studies there, and Anne Sullivan helped her by explaining texts and lectures.
Helen Keller's working life
Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904, and after that, she joined the socialist party, where Helen wrote many articles for the socialist category, and contributed to solving many problems related to women's rights in relation to voting, and interest in birth control.
She also contributed to laying the foundation stone for a special foundation to combat malnutrition and the side effects of vision loss, where this foundation was named "Helen Keller International".
It is worth noting that Helen Keller's joining the Socialist Party may be due to the friendship she has with the prominent socialist critic John Macy, the husband of her teacher Sullivan, who works at Harvard University.
In 1932, Anne completely lost her sight, which made Helen Keller hire a secretary known as Polly Thompson to work for her and for Anne Sullivan, until Anne Sullivan died after losing her sight completely in 1936.
After that, Helen worked between 1946 and 1957 as an international relations consultant in one of the institutions for the blind, and then traveled on a long-term trip to the continent of Asia, where the length of the trip was about forty thousand miles, and lasted for five months, in which Helen was keen to talk among a number of speeches that inspired a large number of people.
It is noteworthy that the biography of Helen Keller was used in one of the television dramas, one of which was called The Miracle Worker, and another work of the same name was presented on the Broadway stage in 1959.
The death of Helen Keller
Helen suffered a stroke in 1960, and since 1961, Helen has lived at her home in Westport, Connecticut, where her last appearance was in the same year, through a special meeting of the Washington International Foundation, where she was honored with the Lions Humanitarian Award, because of her assistance in programs for the blind, Helen also met US President John F. Kennedy at that time, John was not the only US president Helen met in her life.
Helen Keller died on the first of June 1968, at the age of Eighty-Eight, where her body was cremated, and her ashes were placed in St. Joseph's Church at Washington Cathedral, along with the ashes of her two companions: Polly Thompson and Anne Sullivan.
