(THEME)
VOICE ONE:
I’m Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Ray Freeman. Every week we tell about a person who wasimportant in the history of the United States. This week we tellabout Helen Keller. She was blind and deaf but she became a famouswriter and teacher.
(THEME)
VOICE ONE:
The name Helen Keller has hadspecial meaning for millions of people in all parts of the world.She could not see or hear. Yet Helen Keller was able to do so muchwith her days and years. Her success gave others hope. Helen Kellerwas born June twenty-seventh, eighteen-eighty in a small town innorthern Alabama. Her father, Arthur Keller, was a captain in thearmy of the South during the American civil war. Her mother was hissecond wife. She was much younger than her husband. Helen was theirfirst child.
Until she was a year-and-one half old, Helen Keller was just likeany other child. She was very active. She began walking and talkingearly. Then, nineteen months after she was born, Helen became verysick. It was a strange sickness that made her completely blind anddeaf. The doctor could not do anything for her. Her bright, happyworld now was filled with silence and darkness.
VOICE TWO:
From that time until she was almost seven years old, Helen couldcommunicate only by making signs with her hands. But she learned howto be active in her silent, dark environment. The young child hadstrong desires. She knew what she wanted to do. No one could stopher from doing it. More and more, she wanted to communicate withothers. Making simple signs with her hands was not enough. Somethingwas ready to explode inside of her because she could not make peopleunderstand her. She screamed and struggled when her mother tried tocontrol her.
VOICE ONE:
When Helen was six, her fatherlearned about a doctor in Baltimore, Maryland. The doctor hadsuccessfully treated people who were blind. Helen’s parents took heron the train to Baltimore. But the doctor said he could do nothingto help Helen. He suggested the Kellers get a teacher for the blindwho could teach Helen to communicate. A teacher arrived from thePerkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. Her name was AnneSullivan.
She herself had once been almost completely blind. But she hadregained her sight. At Perkins, she had learned the newest methodsof teaching the blind.
VOICE TWO:
Anne Sullivan began by teaching Helen that everything had a name.The secret to the names was the letters that formed them. The jobwas long and difficult. Helen had to learn how to use her hands andfingers to speak for her. But she was not yet ready to learn. First,she had to be taught how to obey, and how to control her anger. MissSullivan was quick to understand this. She wrote to friends inBoston about her experiences teaching Helen.
(MUSIC)
VOICE THREE:
“The first night I arrived I gave Helen a doll. As she felt thedoll with one hand I slowly formed the letters, d-o-l-l with myfingers in her other hand. Helen looked in wonder and surprise asshe felt my hand. Then she formed the letters in my hand just as Ihad done in hers. She was quick to learn, but she was also quick inanger. For seven years, no one had taught her self-control. Insteadof continuing to learn, she picked up the doll and threw it on thefloor. She was this way in almost everything she did.
Even at the table, while eating, she did exactly as she pleased.She even put her hands in our plates and ate our food. The secondmorning, I would not let her put her hand on my plate. The familybecame troubled and left the room. I closed the door and continuedto eat. Helen was on the floor, kicking and screaming and trying topull the chair out from under me.
This continued for half an hour or so. Then she got up from thefloor and came to find out what I was doing. Suddenly she hit me.Every time she did this I hit her hand. After a few minutes of this,she went to her place at the table and began to eat with herfingers. I gave her a spoon to eat with. She threw it on the floor.I forced her to get out of her chair to pick the spoon up. At last,after two hours, she sat down and ate like other people. I had toteach her to obey.
But it was painful to her family to see their deaf and blindchild punished. So I asked them to let me move with Helen into asmall one-room house nearby. The first day Helen was away from herfamily she kicked and screamed most of the time. That night I couldnot make her get into bed. We struggled, but I held her down on thebed. Luckily, I was stronger than she. The next morning I expectedmore of the same, but to my surprise she was calm, even peaceful.
Two weeks later, she had become a gentle child. She was ready tolearn. My job now was pleasant. Helen learned quickly. Now I couldlead and shape her intelligence. We spent all day together. I formedwords in her hand, the names of everything we touched. But she hadno idea what the words meant.
As time passed, she learned how to sew clothes and make things.Every day we visited the farm animals and searched for eggs in thechicken houses. All the time, I was busy forming letters and wordsin her hand with my fingers. Then one day, about a month after Iarrived, we were walking outside. Something important happened.
We heard someone pumping water. I put Helen’s hand under the coolwater and formed the word w-a-t-e-r in her other hand. W-a-t-e-r,w-a-t-e-r. I formed the word again and again in her hand. Helenlooked straight up at the sky as if a lost memory or thought of somekind was coming back to her.
Suddenly, the whole mystery of language seemed clear to her. Icould see that the word w-a-t-e-r meant something wonderful and coolthat flowed over her hand. The word became alive for her. Itawakened her spirit, gave it light and hope. She ran toward thehouse. I ran after her. One by one she touched things and askedtheir name. I told her. She went on asking for names and morenames.”
(MUSIC)
VOICE ONE:
From that time on Helen left the house each day, searching forthings to learn. Each new name brought new thoughts. Everything shetouched seemed alive. One day, Helen remembered a doll she hadbroken. She searched everywhere for the pieces. She tried to put thepieces together but could not. She understood what she had done andwas not happy. Miss Sullivan taught Helen many things — to read andwrite, and even to use a typewriter. But most important, she taughtHelen how to think.
VOICE TWO:
For the next three years, Helen learned more and more new words.All day Miss Sullivan kept touching Helen’s hand, spelling wordsthat gave Helen a language. In time, Helen showed she could learnforeign languages. She learned Latin, Greek, French and German.Helen was able to learn many things, not just languages.
She was never willing to leave a problem unfinished, evendifficult problems in mathematics. One time, Miss Sullivan suggestedleaving a problem to solve until the next day. But Helen wanted tokeep trying. She said, “I think it will make my mind stronger to doit now.”
VOICE ONE:
Helen traveled a lot with her family or alone with Miss Sullivan.In eighteen-eighty-eight, Helen, her mother and Miss Sullivan wentto Boston, Massachusetts. They visited the Perkins Institution whereMiss Sullivan had learned to teach. They stayed for most of thesummer at the home of family friends near the Atlantic Ocean. InHelen’s first experience with the ocean, she was caught by a waveand pulled under the water. Miss Sullivan rescued her. When Helenrecovered, she demanded, “Who put salt in the water?”
VOICE TWO:
Three years after Helen started to communicate with her hands,she began to learn to speak as other people did. She never forgotthese days. Later in life, she wrote: “No deaf child can ever forgetthe excitement of his first word. Only one who is deaf canunderstand the loving way I talked to my dolls, to the stones, tobirds and animals. Only the deaf can understand how I felt when mydog obeyed my spoken command. ” Those first days when Helen Kellerdeveloped the ability to talk were wonderful. But they proved to bejust the beginning of her many successes.
(THEME)
VOICE ONE:
You have been listening to the first part of the story of HelenKeller. It was written by Katherine Clarke. Your narrators wereSarah Long, Ray Freeman and Shirley Griffith. Listen again next weekat this time to People in America, a program in Special English onthe Voice of America.