Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
November is a time for remembering, and I have found myself remembering the story of Helen Keller.
Helen was born on 27 June 1880 in Tuscumbia in Northwest Alabama, USA. In February 1882, when she was nineteen months old, she fell ill, either from scarlet fever or meningitis. She was, for many days, expected to die. Miraculously she recovered, but it soon became apparent that the illness had left her both blind and deaf.
Locked in her strange and frustrating world of darkness and silence Helen became a very difficult child, smashing dishes and lamps and terrorising the whole household with her screaming and temper tantrums. Relatives regarded her as a monster and thought she should be put into an institution. In desperation, her parents consulted Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who was especially concerned about the plight of deaf children.. Through Bell's efforts they were put in touch with a newly qualified specialist teacher, Anne Sullivan, who was herself partially sighted.
On 3 March 1887 Anne arrived at the house in Tuscumbia and for the first time met Helen.. Anne immediately started teaching her to finger spell without much success. Helen was still a terrible handful, and Anne was forced to punish her tantrums by refusing to finger spell words to her. However, Helen's behaviour did begin to improve as a bond grew between the two. Then, after a month of Anne's teaching, a miracle occurred. Helen herself later described the moment:
"We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. 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."
From that moment Helen's hunger for words was insatiable, and within a few hours she learnt the spelling of 30 words. Her progress from then on was astonishing. Her ability to learn was far in advance of anything that anybody had seen before in someone without sight or hearing. It wasn't long before Anne was teaching Helen to read, firstly with raised letters and later with braille, and to write with both ordinary and braille typewriters.
Helen soon became famous, and was invited to visit President Cleveland at the White House. She joined the Cambridge School for Young Ladies in 1896 and in the Autumn of 1900 entered Radcliffe College, becoming the first deafblind person to have ever enrolled at an institution of higher learning.
Helen's first book "The Story of My Life"which was published in 1903. After that Helen and Anne spent a lot of time touring the world raising money for blind people. In 1931 they met King George and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace, who were deeply impressed by Helen's ability to understand what people said through touching their lips and vocal cords.
In 1953 a documentary film "The Unconquered"was made about Helen's life, this was to win an Academy Award as the best feature length documentary. In 1957 the television play "The Miracle Worker" portraying all that Helen and Anne achieved together, first appeared in the United States. In 1959 it was re-written as a Broadway play and opened to rave reviews. It became a smash hit and ran for almost two years. In 1962 it was made into a film and the actresses playing Anne and Helen both received Oscars for their performances.
In 1964 Helen was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the USA's highest civilian award, by President Lyndon Johnson. A year later she was elected to the Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.
Helen wrote in one of her books: 'I thank God for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.'Her faith in God was without doubt at the very heart of her strength, her courage and her determination.
Perhaps you sometimes feel burdened down by life and by the difficulties you face - well remember Helen Keller, and her faith in God. Trust that God will help you through your difficulties as he helped Helen, and never give up hope.
May God bless you all.