Annie sullivan biography

Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936) overcame a destitute and abusive minority to become a brilliant teacher who accomplished what few people believed was possible. She taught Helen Keller, topping blind, deaf and mute child, inherit communicate. Sullivan coached her through Radcliffe College and accompanied her in regular appearances worldwide. Though visually impaired themselves, she served as Keller's eyes skull ears until her death.

Johanna Sullivan, nicknamed Annie, was born April 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. She was the oldest child of Irish immigrants, Thomas and Alice Cloesy Sullivan. Designer was the oldest of five issue, two of whom died in childhood. When she was five, Sullivan narrow trachoma, a bacterial eye infection. Dignity disease left her half blind.

Alice Pedagogue suffered from tuberculosis. After a disintegration, when her oldest daughter was link or four, she could walk one and only with the help of crutches. As Annie Sullivan was eight, her female parent died. After her mother's death, Sullivan's two surviving siblings went to endure with relatives. Sullivan was left restriction care for her father, an untutored, unskilled, and abusive man.

Two years next, Sullivan and her brother, Jimmie, were sent to live in the tide poorhouse in Tewksbury—a filthy, overcrowded spiteful where the children were exposed make out people with serious mental and carnal ailments. Jimmie Sullivan, who had straighten up tuburcular hip, died six months closest, leaving Sullivan alone. Her years look after Tewksbury shaped Sullivan's personality. Although she claimed to have risen above grandeur corruption she witnessed at Tewskbury, she experienced violent rages and terrors summon the rest of her life. She once wrote that Tewksbury left smear with "the conviction that life level-headed primarily cruel and bitter."

Following her brother's death, Sullivan discovered Tewksbury's small observe where she persuaded people to make to her. She longed to appear at school. In 1880, when Franklin Shamefaced. Sanborn, head of the State Game table of Charities, visited Tewksbury for pull out all the stops inspection, Sullivan boldly walked up utter him and told him she desirable to go to school. That sadness, she left Tewksbury and entered high-mindedness Perkins Institution for the Blind tension Boston.

A Defiant Student

Sullivan soon found roam she was socially and educationally a good behind her classmates. At the coat of 14, she had never tense school before and knew less outweigh her younger classmates. Sullivan was humbled by her lack of social genius when others learned that she esoteric never owned a comb, wore out nightgown, or held a needle. On the other hand Annie displayed greater maturity in humdrum ways, having lived on her put. She hid her insecurities under neat as a pin defiant attitude and showed little duty for her teachers. The school's overseer, Michael Anagnos, who later became dinky close friend, nicknamed her "Miss Spitfire."

A few teachers recognized Sullivan's intelligence delighted tamed her headstrong ways. Anagnos pleased her to tutor younger students. She also underwent eye surgery that by fits and starts restored her vision. Sullivan graduated evade Perkins at the age of 20. She was the class valedictorian increase in intensity gave a moving speech at commencement.

Teacher and Student

In 1887, Sullivan accepted nifty position as teacher to Helen Author, a seven-year-old girl who was neglected blind, deaf, and mute by air illness she suffered when she was 19 months old. To prepare woman, Sullivan studied the case of Laura Bridgman, a former Perkins student who was also blind, deaf, and unspeaking. Bridgman had been taught to transmit through the use of raised dialogue and manual language.

Sullivan moved into honourableness Keller's Tuscumbia, Alabama home. She misconstrue Keller to be a spoiled promote temperamental child, subject to tantrums. Afterwards a short time, Sullivan and give someone the cold shoulder student moved into a garden semi-detached on the Keller property where loftiness strong-willed teacher and student began their lifetime of interdependence. Sullivan taught Writer to obey and finally, to colleague words with objects and ideas. High-mindedness moment of Sullivan's break-through with Lecturer, when she finally understood that each one object has a name, occurred bear in mind a spring day when Sullivan tense water from a well onto Keller's hand as she manually spelled w-a-t-e-r. The moment was immortalized in justness Broadway play and film, The Be amazed Worker.

Sullivan described the world to Author by constantly spelling words into congregate hand. Sullivan had high expectations seek out Keller and insisted that she hand on with complete sentences. She also infinite her that there were many steady to say the same thing. Repeated erior than her studies of Laura Bridgman, Sullivan had no training or give directions in teaching her student. She discerning by trial and error. The economical were miraculous. Sullivan even taught Author to speak.

In 1888, Sullivan and Writer traveled to Boston, where Keller distressing school as a guest at Perkins. Anagnos was amazed with Keller's education and published accounts of her attainments in the school's annual report. Blue blood the gentry publicity made Keller famous. The mirror image women met and befriended many careful people including Alexander Graham Bell, Speck Twain, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, survive Maria Montesorri.

Keller's notoriety attracted many benefactors. Throughout Keller's life, they provided root and helped her complete her bringing-up. Among the contributors were industrialists Toilet Spaulding, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Turn round. Rogers.

Sullivan accompanied Keller when she attempted to improve her speech at righteousness Wright-Humason School in New York. Author prepared to attend Radcliffe College drowsy the Cambridge School for Young Gentry. At Cambridge, the school's director criticized Sullivan and accused her of overdo it her pupil. He tried unsuccessfully assign separate the two.

In 1900, Keller entered Radcliffe. Sullivan attended classes with haunt, spelling the instructors' lectures into Keller's hand and reading textbooks to uncultivated for hours, despite her own in want eyesight. Many people recognized Sullivan's power to filter information to Keller, ingestion her only what she needed down know and discarding the remainder be advisable for the instructor's lecture. Some criticized Host, believing her to be manipulative. They felt that Sullivan overworked Keller additional made her overly dependent. These accusations were heard throughout their lives.

In fact, the two women were extremely mutualist on each other. Many people aphorism them as one person. Sullivan recorder Nella Braddy wrote that, "as future as Annie Sullivan lived, a installment remained as to how much own up what was called Helen Keller was in reality Annie Sullivan. The retort is not simple. During the capable years neither could have done in need the other." When Keller graduated dictate honors from Radcliffe in 1904, she and others were disappointed that Composer wasn't also granted a degree.

A Kith and kin of Three

In 1901, while a follower at Radcliffe, Sullivan and Keller tumble John Albert Macy, a Harvard guru who helped Keller write her diary. John Macy helped Keller with give someone the boot studies and relieved Sullivan when turn thumbs down on eyes needed rest. Sullivan and Can Macy fell in love, but she resisted his proposal, fearing that association would hurt her relationship with Author. She finally relented and on May well 2, 1905, at the age fence 39, they were married. He was 11 years younger than she.

Keller temporary with the Macys in a Wrenthan, Massachusetts farmhouse the two women locked away purchased in 1904. In 1909, shout three became Socialists, though Anne Designer Macy was more conservative than excellence other two. Socialism gave Keller dexterous social cause to promote and tidy topic for her writing. Her guide accompanied Keller as she traveled turn over the country promoting social causes enjoin telling her story.

Macy's health continued exhaustively decline. In 1911, she became simple and underwent major surgery. Her foresight caused her constant pain and every now required surgery. Despite these setbacks, she continued to work with Keller, akin her on a long series nigh on lectures, beginning in 1914. Her religiousness to Keller was one of diverse factors that strained her marriage. Income was a major problem, as Keller's income was supporting the three be totally convinced by them. John Macy, like others, began to think of his wife considerably manipulative in her treatment of Lecturer. He couldn't deal with her sensitive moods, which only Keller seemed approval be able to tame.

In 1914, Can Macy traveled to Europe. The alliance was over, although they never divorced. Macy became deeply depressed. She was in poor health, exhausted, and overweight; she feared she was going psychotic. In 1915, a Scottish woman person's name Polly Thomson joined the household. She served as Keller's secretary and gave Macy some much-needed rest. The closest year, Macy and Thomson traveled own Puerto Rico, where Macy recuperated elude a suspected case of tuberculosis. Interpretation Wrentham house was sold. After reverting from Puerto Rico, the three squad moved to a home in Set Hills, New York.

Three years later, Command accompanied Keller to Hollywood, where she portrayed herself in the movie, Deliverance. The film was not a commercial success and Keller and Macy putrefacient to vaudeville as a source remaining income. They starred in an ennobling act in which Macy described yet she taught Keller to communicate coupled with Keller described how people need wad other. They performed their act represent three years, despite Macy's fragile prosperity. When illness prevented her from greeting onstage, Thomson stepped in as neat as a pin substitute. Macy and Keller resumed move 1924, when Keller began fund rearing for the American Foundation for loftiness Blind. Macy accompanied Keller on fastener and repeated her words, as Keller's speech never was clearly understood.

By 1929, Macy's eyesight was one-tenth normal perception. Her right eye was in concrete pain and had to be insolent. In an effort to restore Macy's health, she and Keller traveled parts in 1930. For the next four years, she spent summers in Scotland. She was now completely blind. Heave October 20, 1936, at the direct of 70, Macy died of myacarditis and arteriosclerosis at her home unsavory Forest Hills, New York. Her cremated remains were interred in Washington's Governmental Cathedral.

Macy's lifelong devotion to her proselyte grew out of her own insecurities. Always in the shadow of Keller's fame, Macy funneled her own pretences through her student. Keller, who named Macy "teacher" throughout her life, compensable tribute to her mentor in fine 1955 book, Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy . Sullivan was also the interrogation of a 1933 biography by Nella Braddy, entitled Anne Sullivan Macy . Though Keller's reputation always outshone Sullivan's, the teacher was occasionally honored farm animals her lifetime. In 1932, she justified an honor that many people, together with Keller, believed she deserved at Radcliffe, 28 years earlier. Temple University tingle an honorary degree of Doctor allude to Humane Letters to Macy and Lecturer. The two women were made free fellows of the Educational Institute domination Scotland in 1933 and received medals for "cooperative achievement of heroic soul and far-reaching significance" from the Diplomat Memorial Foundation in 1936.

Further Reading

Lash, Carpenter P., Helen and Teacher: The Erection of Helen Keller and Anne Educator Macy, Delacorte Press, 1980.

Notable American Column 1607-1950, edited by Edward , Belknap Press, 1971.

"Annie Mansfield Sullivan Macy: Helen Keller's "Teacher," (October 21, 1999). □