Rare! Earliest Photo Of Helen Keller And Her Teacher Anne Sullivan Discovered!

[Legmann]

Rare Photo Shows Helen Keller, Teacher
By MELISSA TRUJILLO,AP


BOSTON (March 5) - Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod and tucked inside a family album.





The newly discovered photo shows Helen Keller when she was 8 years old, left, holding hands with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, during a summer vacation in Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod in 1888. Keller became deaf and blind before the age of 2.

The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan's hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

Experts on Keller's life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll — the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 — according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.

"It's really one of the best images I've seen in a long, long time," said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Federation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. "This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie."

For more than a century, though, the photograph was hidden in an album that belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.

Spencer's mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.

Spencer, who doesn't know which of his relatives took the picture, told the society that his mother, four years younger than Helen, remembered Helen exploring her face with her hands.

In June, Spencer donated a large collection of photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the genealogical society, which preserves artifacts from New England families for future research.

"I never thought much about it," Spencer said in a statement released by the society. "It just seemed like something no one would find very interesting." Spencer has recently been hospitalized and could not be reached for comment.

It wasn't until recently that staff at the society realized the photograph's significance.

D. Brenton Simons, the society's president and CEO, said the photograph offers a glimpse of what was a very important time in Keller's life.

Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1 1/2. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.

While "doll" was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word "water," as famously depicted in the film "The Miracle Worker." Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.

"The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it's a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne's life," Seymour-Ford said.

Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller's childhood: that devotion, Sullivan's push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen's attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan's arrival as her teacher.

"It's a beautiful composition," she said. "It's not even the individual elements. It's the fact that it has all of the components."

[Legmann]

It really is a beautiful picture!

[KevinShinnick]

Inspiring.

That's a real piece of history, there.

[deanwell]

Originally Posted by Legmann

It really is a beautiful picture!

You shall surely burn for this then

http://forum.anothersite.co.uk/feeli...ler-jokes.html

[Legmann]

And that surprises you how?

[Harpoon]

Lets write some Legmann jokes and make light of his "situations"..

[Vardar]

Originally Posted by Harpoon

Lets write some Legmann jokes and make light of his "situations"..

Why was Legmann's leg yellow? His dog was blind too.

[Meursault]

legmann had a legless dog. That dog was nameless, too. But that was alright - it's not as if he would have come to him when he called him.

[Legmann]

Why did Legmann have sex with only two women?

The first five women tired him out.

[Legmann]

What does Legmann call having sex with three women?

Business as usual.

[Prof Maxwell]

I've read the story of these two remarkable ladies so many times. This picture is a true gem.

[deanwell]

Originally Posted by Legmann

What does Legmann call having sex with three women?

Business as usual.

A Dream!

[Legmann]

All kidding aside, the story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan is remarkable!

A little girl, blind and deaf almost all her life, has no idea there is a real world out there. And a young woman finds a way to bring the world to life for the girl. Amazing!