Today would have been Anne Sullivan Macy's 148th birthday. Let's honor her memory as Helen's beloved teacher and champion by supporting the Cogswell-Macy Act, which will provide equal resources and access to opportunity for children with vision loss or who are deaf/hard of hearing. Visit www.afb.org/CogswellMacyAct today for more information on the law and how you can help.
Anne led an extraordinary life. Many are unaware of all that she overcame prior to being chosen by the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts to be Helen Keller's governess in 1886. Anne surmounted a childhood of poverty and neglect, her mother died of tuberculosis when she was 9 and Anne developed trachoma when she was 7 and remained legally blind until she was 15. She and her brother Jimmie were sent to the infamous Tewksbury Almshouse where Jimmie died 3 months later. Many years later she described it this way:
"Unexpected good has filled the chinks of frustration in my life. But at times melancholy without reason grips me as in a vice [sic]. A word, an odd inflection, the way somebody crosses the street, brings all the past before me with such amazing clearness and completeness, my heart stops beating for a moment. Then everything around me seems as it was so many years ago. Even the ugly frame-buildings are revived. Again I see the unsightly folk who hobbled, cursed, fed and snored like animals. I shiver recalling how I looked upon scenes of vile exposure—the open heart of a derelict is not a pleasant thing. I doubt if life, or eternity for that matter, is long enough to erase the errors and ugly blots scored upon my brain by those dismal years."
She successfully had herself transferred to Perkins when she was 14 years old. Her huge intelligence and fiery determination were paramount in enabling her to overcome crippling obstacles. Anne took all that she had learned about hardship and transformed it to foster and teach her young deaf-blind pupil. Helen rapidly learned to read braille and conversed using the manual sign language, she also learned to articulate words. As we know, that was just the beginning. Helen went on to global prominence.
When the pupil exceeds the master, the teacher has done their job well. Happy Birthday, Annie!
To learn more about Anne Sullivan Macy, visit the Anne Sullivan Macy online museum.
