Letters From Grandpa #238

LETTERS FROM GRANDPA

• 238

Dearest grandchild.

Today’s letter will deal with the inspirational story of Annie Sullivan. She was born in Massachusetts April 14, 1866. Her family emigrated from Ireland during the Great Famine. At five years of age Annie contracted a bacterial eye disease known as trachoma. This left her virtually blind. Her mother died when she was eight and her father abandoned her two years later. She and her younger brother, Jimmie, wound up in an overcrowded poorhouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Among the 940 inmates there were the vilest of predatory tramps, old prostitutes maniacs, poor pregnant women, cripples, and tubercular slum dwellers. Annie and Jimmie slept on iron cots in a huge dormitory with rats running between their beds. Jimmie died of tuberculosis in only four months.

Annie was 14 when Franklin Sanborn visited the poorhouse. He was the head of a committee of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities. According to one version Annie stood in front of the delegation and said: “Mr. Sanborn, Mr. Sanborn, I want to go to school”. Consequently, Sanborn arranged for Annie to go to the Perkins School for the Blind as a charity case. At the age of 14, she couldn't read or even write her name. She had never owned a nightgown or hairbrush, and did not know how to thread a needle. Initially she suffered humiliation from students and teachers alike. After the first two years, however, she became like a daughter to a house mother, Mrs. Sophia Hopkins. A surgery on her eyes dramatically improved her vision to the point where she could read print. She ultimately excelled academically and graduated in 1896 the Valedictorian of her class. In her valedictory address she said: “Duty bids us go forth into active life. Let us go cheerfully, hopefully, and earnestly, and set ourselves to find our especial part. When we have found it, willingly and faithfully perform it; for every obstacle we overcome, every success we achieve tends to bring man closer to God.”

In March, 1887, at only 20 years of age, Annie went to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to work with a 7 year old girl named Helen Keller who was blind, deaf, and dumb. Annie’s success in teaching Helen was depicted in a play by William Gibson titled The Miracle Worker (1959). It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 and was made into a movie in 1962 which won two Academy Awards. Here are a few of the MANY achievements and honors bestowed upon Helen Keller. With the help of Annie, Helen began speech classes in the Horace Mann school for the Deaf in Boston in 1890. From 1894-96 she attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City. In 1896 she attended the Cambridge School for Young Ladies. Helen graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904 at the age of 24. In 1980 the United States Postal Service issued a stamp featuring Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan to mark the hundredth anniversary of Helen’s birth. In 1999 TIME magazine listed Helen as one of the 100 most influential people in the 20th century. She has also been honored with specially minted coins in her honor, has been inducted into Alabama’s Women’s Hall of Fame, and also the Alabama’s Writers Hall of Fame.

In 1915 Annie was given a medal and honored by the Department of Education and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition for her success as a teacher. Here are a few remarks she delivered on that auspicious occasion: “Every child begins life an eager, active little creature, always doing something, always trying to get something that he wants very much. Even before he can utter a

word, succeeds in making known his desires by cries and grimaces. He invents and devises ways to get the things he wants. He is the star performer in his little world; he is the horse, the coachman, the policeman, the robber, the chauffeur, the automobile. He will be anything that requires initiative action. The one thing he never voluntarily chooses to be is the grown up personage that sits in the car and does nothing. Our educational system spoils this fine enthusiasm. We impose the role of passenger upon the child, and give him no opportunities to exercise his inborn creative faculties. The alluring joy of creation is not for him. He is deluged with accomplished facts. Naturally, he becomes mischievous and difficult to manage. He is compelled to defy his teachers in order to save his soul . . . It did not occur to me for some time that my experiments and deductions in the teaching of a deaf, dumb and blind child had any bearing upon the education of normal children. My task seemed to me a special one, quite apart from general education. I was trying to make the process of teaching a child that lacked two important senses pleasant to the child, and at the same time interesting to me. But as my work advanced, I saw that my ideas were proving successful. People began to talk about Helen's amazing progress, and to compare her mental development to that of normal children. Here was a little girl, without sight, without hearing, who was learning faster than most children with all their faculties. It began to dawn on me that my method, or lack of method, might have a broader application, might be of value to teachers of children with all their senses . . .”

Annie had problems with her vision throughout her life, and in 1935 went completely blind in both eyes. On Oct. 15, 1936 she suffered a heart attack, fell into a coma, and died five days later at the age of 70. Let us consider again her profound words delivered in her valedictory address fifty years before: “Duty bids us go forth into active life. Let us go cheerfully, hopefully, and earnestly, and set ourselves to find our especial part. When we have found it, willingly and faithfully perform it; for every obstacle we overcome, every success we achieve tends to bring man closer to God.”

I love you,

Grandpa Boyce