Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: FRESH (04/29/21)
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TITLE: The Finger Talker | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
04/30/21 -
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Arthur and Katherine Keller called their first daughter Helen on that June 27th morning in 1880. Their walking, talking prodigy slipped into a nightmare before she was two, losing sight and sound to scarlet fever or meningitis. “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see shadow.”
Inspired by the writings of Charles Dickens and directed to Alexander Graham Bell the Kellers were linked with Ann Sullivan from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. A new world took on meaning as fresh as the planet after the flood. Emerging from the ark of darkness, seven-year-old Helen felt objects, associated them with words conveyed through finger signals on her palm. She learned sentences by feeling raised words on cardboard. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
Fourteen Books emerged from her heart. Lectures followed with the help of an interpreter. She traveled the world through 39 countries in silent darkness, touching, smelling, sharing her humanity through a two-million-dollar endowment fund and cofounding the American Civil Liberties Union. The blind and deaf were released from asylums as free as the chosen after the ark doors were opened. Blinded soldiers and sailors found support through her efforts. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
Her Harvard Bachelor of Arts was a first for the blind and deaf. A fresh start for the disabled. One of her Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Her recent family had fought for the confederates and were slave owners. In her autobiography, Keller noted that “there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.”
Water was the key to washing the world fresh in a flood and water was the key to opening a fresh new world for Keller. Sullivan motioned on one palm while running water over the other. “I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free.”
Fifty years of friendship with Anne kept life fresh for Helen. Mark Twain was an admirer and was instrumental in securing her funding for university where she graduated at the age of 24. She used her fingers to feel the lips and throat of speakers so she could ‘hear’ them and she learned to sense music by placing her fingertips on a resonant tabletop. “Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.”
Though deaf and blind, she met every US president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson. She added Charlie Chaplain to her friends’ list. She wrote on a women’s right to vote and the impacts of war. She pointed out the political and social blindness and deafness of those who opposed her socialist views on workers’ rights. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Phillips Brooks introduced Helen to Christianity. Her response. “I always knew He was there, but I didn’t know his name!”
In 1999, Keller was listed among the most widely admired people of the 20th century by Gallup. In 2003 she was featured on the Alabama state quarter. A daycare in India and a hospital in Sheffield, Alabama are dedicated to her. Streets are named after her in Switzerland, in Spain, in Israel, in Portugal and in France.
On June 1, 1968, she stepped out of the limitations she had known for 88 years and saw a fresh glimpse of a smiling face who had walked every step of her journey with her. Until then, she had always known He was there. Now, she knows His name and His smile.
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