Letters From Grandpa #408

LETTERS FROM GRANDPA

• 408

Dearest grandchild,

Today’s letter will be about Laura Bridgman. She was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on December 21, 1829. Laura had two older healthy sisters but she was born with difficulties. She was underweight, sickly, and suffered from convulsions. When she was two years old, she contracted scarlet fever and lost the ability to see, hear, taste, or smell. Her only contact with the world around her was the sense of touch. Helen Keller, born years later on June 27, 1880, had a similar story.

Both women owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. Dr. Howe wanted to help everyone but had a special passion for blind people. He was born in Boston in 1801, and graduated from Brown University in 1821 and from Harvard Medical School in 1824. He was a great humanitarian and even traveled abroad and risked his life helping Greece throw off years of Turkish tyranny. Howe’s activism did not stop once the guns were silenced with Greek Independence. He worked selflessly to assist Greek war orphans, arranging for many to be adopted and to come to the U.S. He returned to Boston in 1831 and married Julia Ward on April 23, 1843. They had six children. Julia Ward Howe, as you know, composed the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

As we have said, Dr. Howe had a passion to help the blind and opened a school for the blind in his father’s home. His first two students were sisters, Sophia and Abigail Carter. Within a month he had six students and needed more room. Thomas H. Perkins offered them his house. The school continued to grow and in 1839 moved to the Mt. Washington House Hotel and became known as the Perkins Institute for the Blind. Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher, was a graduate of this school.

Dr. Howe heard about Laura Bridgman and visited her home in Hanover, New Hampshire in the Fall of 1837. Laura was seven at the time but had been reduced by her handicaps to the level of an animal. Such children were usually considered insane and consigned to badly run state asylums. Dr. Howe persuaded her parents to let Laura come to his school in Boston. He described his hope for her by saying: “She was like a person alone and helpless in a deep dark still pit, and I was letting down a cord and dangling it about in the hope that she might find it”.

Dr. Howe eagerly accepted the challenge of helping Laura. First, he made paper labels with raised letters to help her name things. Soon she was able to make a connection between the labels and the objects they were pasted on. Next, letters were given to her separately. Soon she learned to combine the letters b-o-o-k and then paste them on a real book. Her excitement mounted, and so did that of Dr. Howe. She was reaching out in her world of darkness and finding the cord. When the magic moment came when she found that cord Dr. Howe said it was something he would never forget: “Her countenance lighted up with a human expression. She was no longer a dog or a parrot, imitating commands. She was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits”. Dr. Howe described this as the happiest moment of his life. Laura was highly intelligent and learned to read and communicate using Braille and the manual alphabet developed by Charles-Michel de l'Épée.

When Dr. Howe published Laura’s story in the Ninth Annual Report of the Perkins Institute it created a sensation throughout America and around the world. Famous writers, such as Charles Dickens, came to Boston to visit Laura. Howe sent accounts of her progress and his teaching strategies to European journals that were read by thousands. Laura even appeared before the Massachusetts Legislature and was instrumental in obtaining a $6,000 annual stipend for the school.

Laura, however, was yet to discover a better “cord” let down from heaven by the Creator of the Universe. With the help of Dr. Howe, by faith she grabbed that Cord and received Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. She described her experience with God with these poignant words: “I heard Jesus speak down from His throne into my heart. My heart was opened by the hand of Jesus and He illumined my heart with glory and light and grace. I behold His face boldly. My feelings were governed by the Spirit of God and Jesus Christ. God taught me to pray and guided my heart”. She even composed a poem describing her new found relation with God: “Heaven is my home . . . by the finger of God. My eyes and my ears shall be opened. The string of my tongue will be loosed.”

Laura occupied herself by writing letters to her mother and a few friends, sewing, reading the Bible in braille, and keeping her room fastidiously clean. She earned a little spending money, about $100 a year, from selling her crocheted doilies, purses, and embroidered handkerchiefs. She passed away on May 24, 1889.

Dr. Howe spent his life helping others. He was a passionate abolitionist who founded an antislavery newspaper, the Boston Daily Commonwealth. He also helped found the Boston Vigilance Committee helping former slaves. During the Civil War he served on the Sanitary Commission helping to improve hygiene standards and prevent disease. After the war, Howe continued to provide help for slaves who had been freed.

When Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit he went to the synagogue at Nazareth on the Sabbath as his custom was. They delivered unto him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and he stood up and began to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom the prisoners and recovering of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19). To their amazement he said: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”!

It seems that Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe joined with Jesus in this wonderful work of giving freedom to prisoners, giving sight to the blind, and releasing the oppressed.

I love you,

Grandpa Boyce