Helen Keller

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'Meet Helen Keller'

Helen Keller was a wild child. She threw temper tantrums, kicking and screaming until she was exhausted. She grabbed food from everyone's plate at the dinner table and ate with her hands. Once she locked her mother in the kitchen for three hours.
Helen was not a "bad" girl. Her problems began when she was only 19 months old. After an illness called "brain fever," which may have been scarlet fever or meningitis, Helen lost her eyesight and hearing and couldn't speak. She was angry. She was frustrated. She had difficulty making herself understood. Helen's parents felt sorry for her and didn't know how to handle her. Yet despite her early difficulties, Helen became well educated and a respected leader who fought for the rights of the deaf and blind.
Helen, born on June 27, 1880, in the small farming town of Tuscumbia, Ala., was the oldest of three children of Arthur and Kate Keller. Helen also had two older half-brothers, born to her father before his first wife died. Her father was the editor of the town newspaper. They lived on a farm where they raised pigs, turkeys, chickens and sheep.
Through touching, tasting and smelling, Helen learned a great deal about the world she could no longer see or hear. She could recognize people and their ages just by the vibrations from their footsteps on a bare floor. When she walked around, she knew where she was by the different smells from the shops in town or from the flowers on the farm.
As she grew a little older, she tried to communicate. She shook her head to mean "no." A pull meant "come," and a push, "go." When people spoke, she touched their lips but couldn't understand their words. She tried moving her lips, but no one could understand her.
For years, Helen's parents took her to see many doctors and tried many treatments, but nothing would bring back her sight or hearing. It seemed she would forever live in a dark and silent world. Tuscumbia was a long way from any schools for the blind or deaf. A friend of Helen's mother suggested that they send Helen to an institution, wondering if she were even capable of learning.
But Helen's mother had read a book by Charles Dickens describing a deaf-blind girl he had met while visiting the United States. Dickens reported that this girl had been taught to communicate by finger spelling. Each letter of the alphabet was formed by moving fingers in different positions. Hoping Helen could be taught finger spelling too, the Kellers began looking for a teacher.

Article By: Sherrill Kushner, LA Times. 27th June 2005.

http://www.4hearingloss.com/archives/2005/06/meet_helen_kell.html