TEXT: Before her illness, Helen was a precocious child, already using rudimentary language as she trundled about Ivy Green. In the climax of the play (and in real life), the actual "key" to Helen's adoption of sign language came at the pump as water splashed onto her while Annie spelled into her hand "w-a-t-e-r." A sleeping memory awoke, and the finger game became language. In her excitement, Helen ran from place to place, object to object, patting the thing and then thrusting her palm to Annie, ready to learn the object's name. She pointed to Annie and felt in her palm, "t-e-a-c-h-e-r."
Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her parents were Captain Arthur H. Keller and his second wife, Kate Adams Keller. When she was nineteen months old, Helen was left deaf and blind as the result of a severe illness. Had she been born today, she would very likely have lived to be a healthy, normal child. But it was the great fortune of humanity, and particularly those who are blind, deaf, or both, that Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing to become the most articulate and passionate advocate for the blind and deaf the world has ever known.
The picture above shows the house where Helen lived with her family from birth until she went away to school. It is also the site where the action portrayed in William Gibson's play The Miracle Worker actually occurred, and in a series of events very close to Mr. Gibson's depiction of them. Ivy Green, as the estate is called, is now on the National Register of Historic Places and serves as a shrine to the great woman who was born there.
