Blessed, we are all able to read textbooks, storybooks, comics and more with help of two things (eyes and knowledge). But there was a girl who could read even though she was blind!
Her name was Helen Keller and here is her story:
1) Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA.
2) Her father was Arthur Henley Keller and her mother was Catherine Everett Keller. She was born in a large family – one sister and two half-brothers for her dad’s previous marriage. Helen Keller describes her life in her first autobiography, "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”.
3) When she was around 19 months old, Helen Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which left her both deaf and blind. In her autobiography, she recalls her life as, "at sea in a dense fog".
4) Over the years, Helen Keller was able to communicate with Martha Washington, the daughter of the family cook. Together they had developed 60+ signs.
5) Keller’s parent took her to Alexander Graham Bell, who advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind. A 20-year-old alumna of the school, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, was chosen as Keller's instructor.
6) Sullivan immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present.
7) In 1894, Keller and Sullivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and to learn from Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf.
8) In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe College, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
9) She devoted her life for the sake of the deaf and blind.
10) Helen Keller died in her sleep in 1968 a few weeks before turning 88.
Inspiring isn't it. Friends, please feel free to share further insights about Helen Keler if you can.
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