Meet the Miracle Worker: Annie Sullivan's Role in Helen Keller's Life

Scott: 00:00:06

Imagine for a moment a world of absolute, unyielding silence. A world where there is no color, no light, and no way to tell the person standing next to you that you are hungry or cold or afraid.

For seven year old Helen Keller, this wasn't a thought experiment. It was her reality.

,: 1887

She brought a different kind of miracle. The mystery of language. A language that would pull Helen Keller out of the darkness.

Today on Talk with History, Jen takes us to the very spot where that transformation happened.

Were standing at the pump, walking the halls of ivy green and exploring the bedroom where a young Helen once locked her new teacher in in a fit of defiance.

But as we look at Helen's incredible legacy, the bachelor's degree, the activism, the global influence, we have to look at the woman who stood beside her every step of the way. Annie Sullivan was a miracle worker, not just because of her patience, but because of her own survival.

Today we explore Annie's own path and how it led her to Helen. We're honoring the bond between a teacher who refused to give up and a student who was waiting to be found. Welcome to Talk with History.

I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian Jim.

Jenn: 00:01:50

Hello.

Scott: 00:01:51

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there. Alrighty, Jen. So Helen Keller, pretty well known historic figure. Her home, her birthplace.

Home is about what, hour, hour and a half from here, us here in Memphis.

Jenn: 00:02:18

Yeah. And it was exactly two hours.

Scott: 00:02:21

You decided to get the kids out of the house and go up and check it out.

Jenn: 00:02:24

Yeah, we've always driven by it and I knew it was there and it's in the northwest corner of Alabama. So if you think about Memphis, we had to drive like across Tennessee. We had a little bit of Mississippi and then we got into Alabama.

So it was so weird to go across three states in only two hours. Right. Because you go across Tennessee is six hours. So it really is like you go south and then it's that, that northwest corner. But I had.

It's so funny how I knew how close it was because of Steve Tyler from Aerosmith. So he was here, he opened a halfway house here outside of Memphis for women.

And while he was here, I remember him coming to the Starbucks and meeting some cops.

Scott: 00:03:08

That was when we were living here before.

Jenn: 00:03:09

Yes. And he went to Helen Keller's house and he took pictures with the people there because he wanted to go there. And I was like, oh, it must be close.

And so that's how I always knew that it was relatively close by. And I wanted to tell this story. It's Women's History Month. I wanted to get the kids out at spring break, and. And I wanted to go there and. And.

And see where it happened. Because that's the cool part about going to Ivy Green. That's the name of the home, is you get to see where that miracle happened.

Because the water pump is there, the actual water pump where Annie Sullivan made her breakthrough with Helen Keller. And so I. I love, as you know, on this channel, to be in the presence of where history happened. And you get to go there and visit there.

It's open for you. It's a national landmark, and it's not that far from people here in Memphis.

Scott: 00:04:02

Yeah. And one of the things. And I remember growing up learning about Helen Keller, right.

Especially here in America, you know, lots of us will learn about Helen Keller and her amazing story. And you may or may not have seen the Miracle Worker movie, and we'll talk about that a little bit later.

And I remembered very vividly the scene from the movie, right. When I was a kid, probably whenever they were showing us, this was the water scene, right.

And that's when I think you did a really good job in this video. And if you want to watch it, the video link will be in the podcast show Notes. You did a really good job of emphasizing that was the moment, right.

That moment where Annie Sullivan. And we'll talk about her background, who had come, been kind of sent out to help teach Helen Keller to.

To try something because her parents were trying to. To figure something out for Helen. That was the moment. And you.

You did a good job saying, this is when everything changed, right then when they were at the water pump and she made. She kind of taught Helen Keller this is what water is.

And because Helen, when she was 18, 19 months old, you know, at that age, you know, you might be saying a couple words. Mom, dad, water, right? And wawa. And so that clicked right then and there. She was tapping that.

That kind of code into her hand and then making her feel water. And you said, I think you took. Took two months or something like that.

And you did such a good Job of, of emphasizing that is like, that is when everything changed right then, right there. And it's because of Annie Sullivan.

Jenn: 00:05:44

I know. It gets me. It gets me so emotional. So, Ivy Green, let's talk about the house first. And so what's going on? What's Ivy Green?

You have to think Helen Keller is from the south. And she.

Scott: 00:05:57

I didn't realize her family was so well off.

Jenn: 00:06:00

of the Civil War. And this is: 1887

She's born in: 1880

Scott: 00:06:21

Yeah. And it's again, one of those things that I always appreciate when we do this.

ntext. Right. She was born in: 1880

Like, I always pictured her as more of, you know, much later in life because that's when you kind of know what her impact was and all that stuff. But it was fascinating for me to hear her family. This was a Civil War era family that came from old south money and was part of the Confederacy.

It was like. That was super interesting.

Jenn: 00:07:02

Yeah. So this is. Think of this as a plantation home. I mean, they had 640 acres.

They got one of those early land grants, and they had enslaved and they worked the land. And now ivy Green is 10 acres. But Helen Keller is the product of Captain Keller's second marriage.

So he was married before, had two sons, and then his wife dies. And so he marries again. And he's in his 40s and his new wife is in her 20s, and she's actually from Memphis, and her grand.

Her father is actually a Confederate general. He's buried at Elmwood Cemetery, which we have done coverage of, or probably go out there and go to his grave specifically. But so she's well off.

So this is a very well off family. He brings her back to Ivy Green. He builds a little outbuilding. There was an outbuilding there that was kind of like an office shed.

He kind of outfits it as their honeymoon suite, puts in new furniture. The boys are older, so they're in the main house, plus they have servants, so people in the main house.

And then he is with her in the honeymoon suite. And that. That's where Helen is born. She's not born in the main house. She's born in that side house.

And because they have money, because they have means, you know, they're. They're well off. She's 19 months old when she. They think she contracted bacterial meningitis. They're not sure.

And she gets a very high fever for three days. And then finally the fever breaks. And they're so thankful. But then they realize their daughter is now blind and deaf.

But like you said, the blessing of that is she had some early understanding of sight and sound. So for five years, they're unable to really communicate with her. She knows some basic signs and she's able, but she.

She really gets her way by throwing tantrums. She really just makes a mockery of stuff. She grabs things. She. She just eats wildly and she locks her mom into a pantry.

Scott: 00:08:57

She.

Jenn: 00:08:57

And she'll. She just does these crazy things. So she's not really held accountable. They don't really know how to punish her.

They don't really know how to educate her. And so their parents go, how do we help our daughter? And because they are people of means, they're able to contact Alexander Graham Bell.

And as you remember, Alexander Graham Bell is married to a woman who's deaf. And that's why he develops the telephone, thinking he can help deaf people by resonating sound.

He says, there's a really great school for the blind, and I recommend she gets a teacher, not a doctor. And you contact the school for the blind. It's the Perkins School for the blind.

Scott: 00:09:35

Yeah.

And again, that I thought it was just so interesting because not having known really anything of Helen Keller's story other than what I learned in elementary school. Right. Many moons ago, them engaging with Alexander Graham Bell, who we all know this massive historic figure.

And he basically said, oh, you know, hey, you know, fellow person with means, you should reach out to this school for the deaf and blind.

Jenn: 00:10:01

Yeah. And so, because they're people of means, so you have to realize, like, this is not the norm for people who have children or like this.

And I talk about that more than likely, if you're born in this situation. More like Annie Sullivan. I'm going to talk about her. You are institutionalized, and you mostly will die from neglect or abuse.

And so you never get out of your prison of darkness and no sound, you are stuck in there forever. And when he contacts the school for the blind, they are able to offer a salary of 25amonth, which is pretty significant.

And they ask for someone to come to them in Alabama and teach Their. And help with their daughter. And what has kind of spurned this is Helen Keller's parents had just had another baby.

Scott: 00:10:53

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:10:53

And Helen had knocked the baby over in the bassinet. Just kind of. She's just getting violent. She was jealous of the baby and she just knocks her over.

Because again, here's a girl trapped in her own mind.

Scott: 00:11:06

And she's, she's seven at this point.

Jenn: 00:11:07

And so she's just. She's going to get bigger, she's going to get more violent. And so they wanted to be like, how can we help her?

So they contact the Perkins School for the blind, offer 25amonth, and they in turn send their former valedictorian, who's 20 years old, who's looking to make her way in the world. She needs. She needs means to. They send Annie Sullivan to her.

Scott: 00:11:28

Yeah, so. So Annie Sullivan, I had vaguely remembered. Right.

Obviously watching the movie, and again, we'll talk about the movie here in just a bit, but remembered her being the teacher, remembered her being the one to kind of help her realize, you know, this is what water is, the language and all that stuff. And then kind of helping Helen Keller learn and kind of become who she was.

So tell us about Annie Sullivan, because that's kind of who we spent a good majority of this video talking about. Because I wouldn't say that Annie Sullivan is like in the shadow of Helen Keller. I wouldn't really, really wouldn't say that at all.

But obviously everybody knows Helen Keller, so that story is pretty, pretty well out there. But Annie Sullivan's story was almost, and I'd say, if not more so, as inspirational.

Jenn: 00:12:15

Yeah. So I think, like you said, it really was the bravery of Annie Sullivan who pulls Helen out. Now Helen is going to capitalize on all that education.

She is a smart girl. Right. So she can. She's going to learn. She's going to gobble up all of the information and knowledge.

But to understand that connection, took somebody to do that. And that was the, I think, the fortitude of this woman, Annie Sullivan.

And you'll hear Ann Sullivan and Annie Sullivan, they're kind of interchangeable. She Irish, born in Massachusetts, but born in poverty at 5 years old. And Sullivan contracts trachoma.

And it's, it's a, basically a infection, an eye infection that if you don't treat it with medication, because if you can't afford it, you basically go blind. So severed from poverty, suffered from abuse from her father. Her mother dies from tuberculosis when she's 8. Her father abandons her two years later.

So when she's 10, he abandons her and her little brother and they're sent to a poor house. And her brother is already weak, and he dies within six months of tuberculosis. And Annie, she has two more eye operations there.

They're not successful. She basically goes completely blind.

ets investigated for cruelty.: 1875

And when it's investigated, she makes a point to get in front of these investigators and say, I want to go to school. I want to learn. I want to. I want to do something.

And one of the investigators, he's friends with the chairman of the Perkins School for the Blind, and he notices this little girl is blind. And what's a. What's a great way to help this girl is I have a. I have a way to get her there. So they actually get a.

A sponsor for her, and she's sent to the Perkin School for the Blind. Now, what's amazing is she's 14 years old. It's the first time she's going to learn to read or write.

She said she had a hard time connecting because she didn't know manners, and she was very humiliated by it. How to sit and how to learn and how to ask questions. Like, she didn't know any of this. Think of a. Yeah, that's.

Scott: 00:14:42

That's so interesting because that's such a. That's a societal thing, especially of the time. Right. Entering into, like, a more. More formal education that was very kind of.

Much more kind of proper and propriety and all that stuff. So that's interesting.

Jenn: 00:14:56

Yeah.

She befriends Laura Bridgman, and she's a graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, and she's the first blind and deaf person to be educated there. So Annie has a very good example of a deaf blind person being educated at the school for the blind.

Scott: 00:15:13

So she kind of had these techniques. She pull these techniques from what she saw at the school and took those with her. Okay, that's.

Jenn: 00:15:20

That.

Scott: 00:15:21

I. I didn't realize that that's. She. She brought that with her, and it makes a lot more sense. I mean, even still, what she did with Helen Keller is amazing. But that's pretty cool.

Jenn: 00:15:30

Yeah. So they learned, like, kind of this tap code.

It's kind of like a Braille tap code for letters and spelling out Words think of like a Morse code but with a tap on your hand. It's not the, it's not the American Sign Language in your hand because that hasn't quite been developed yet, but it's like a tap.

And so In June of: 1886

Scott: 00:15:59

Wow.

Jenn: 00:15:59

So when they send for somebody, Perkins School for the Blind sends their best. Who needs that kind of job? So you kind of think Annie Sullivan needs this job. Helen Keller needs Annie Sullivan.

Annie Sullivan is really a self educated woman. She's really proven that this can happen.

She has had two successful eye operations while she's there where she can see a little bit, but she still is blind and I mean technically blind.

,: 1887

Scott: 00:16:48

And it's cool.

And it's cool too because in the video, right, they actually, because Helen Keller was so famous and her parents were well off, there was pictures of her when she was younger and so they actually, you know, you can find some of that and I, I put some of those pictures that are, you know, publicly available into the, into the video and they show a picture of Annie with Helen and with a doll sitting in her lap. Now obviously it's a, it's a little bit later. It's not like the month that she showed up, but it's cool to be able to see that.

And then also as you see these pictures, you see Helen Keller growing up, but you see her as a child first with Annie Sullivan.

So they take, take some pictures early on and you eventually kind of see her growing up with Annie Sullivan to her becoming an adult and, and all that stuff.

Jenn: 00:17:34

And what's so interesting is Helen will do the code back in her hand. But she, and we know this because Helen will write her autobiography about all of this. She didn't know what she was doing.

She just thought it was a game. She gives me this doll, she taps in my hand, I'm going to just tap in her hand back. So she didn't know the correlation. She's just think it's.

But Annie knew If she could do that, if she can understand what this is, we can teach her. Now, the problem is Helen's been running wild for five years. So as immediately after Annie moves into the same bedroom as Helen, Helen's mad.

She shuts the door, locks the door with one of those skeleton keys, and then hides the key and walks out of the house.

Scott: 00:18:12

Yeah, and they have the key there at the. At the house that's now a museum.

Jenn: 00:18:15

And so then when, by the time the parents realize that she's locked in the door, she. They don't know where the key is. They can't ask Helen. Right. Because they can't even communicate with her.

And so the first thing they have to do is get a ladder to the second floor window to get Annie out of the window. Now, Annie's going to insist on stopping this. These outbursts, these temper tantrums. She's gonna.

And if you've seen the Miracle Worker, you know, like how she eats around the dinner table. She just grabs people's food and eats it. And Annie says no and tries to hold her accountable. And that does happen. There was a many temper tantrums.

Annie Sullivan gets kicked in the face at one point by Helen Keller and loses a tooth. She. So this is like that month, that month of trying to wrangle her in. And it takes a month and two days.

And it happens at the water pump where she's pumping the water and spelling water into her hand. I don't want to get upset. And I have a daughter, and my. My daughter really loved going here.

It really resonated with her because she's 11 years old, and I think she could relate to that. Not getting your own way and throwing temper tantrums. She's our only daughter.

And so she connected Wawa being 19 months old and learning that word, she was able to pull that out, that what she was spelling in her hand was the thing she was touching. And so she was able in that moment to. To realize things, have words, and I can explain things and I can ask for things. And I.

If you have the gift of language, it can open everything up for you. And so I think that's the miracle. That's the moment that Helen connects the word to the thing and finally has a language to communicate.

They say in that first day she learned 60 words because she just want. And you see it in them. They depict it in the movie so. Well, she keeps touching things and she keeps signing them.

And then I think in the first month she learned like 600 words. But what this does is. It reinforces. Helen has now outgrown her circumstances. She's going to want to go into the world and learn.

And she will forever have a companion of Annie Sullivan.

Scott: 00:20:32

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:20:33

And she will always refer to her as teacher from here on out because that is her link to the outside world. Everything will be linked through who can. Who can educate her, who can tap the words to her. Annie would do books. Right. She teaches Helen how to talk.

They do this thing where she touches her naval cavity, she touches her lips and she touches her throat. You'll see a lot of these pictures of Helen Keller's hands on people's faces because that's how she can hear their.

Hear what they're saying, know what they're saying.

Scott: 00:21:02

Yeah, that was interesting because they're. You showed a couple of the pictures that they have at the home, Right. And if you're in the Memphis area and. And.

Or even kind of in that central Tennessee area, you. You can get out there and go see it. It's a. It's a great little visit. But.

But they show some of the pictures, like you said, of Helen with her hand on someone's face, like kind of doing that touch. And she's with Annie Sullivan. She's with other people. She's with President Eisenhower, eventually, later in life.

And so there's a picture of her, and I don't know if it's her and Annie Sullivan or her and her later companion, Paulie, with President Eisenhower. And he's. You can see him smiling. Right? So it's really cool to see that.

Jenn: 00:21:44

Yes. And so what makes them more popular is Helen will want more of an education. And again, coming from means.

And people learn about them and want to sponsor them.

She'll get a sponsor to pay for her education to Ratcliffe College at Harvard, and she becomes the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a bachelor's degree. But you have to realize, and I say this in the video, Annie Sullivan's tapping it all into her hand.

So Eddie Sullivan's also getting a bachelor's degree from Ratcliffe College. It'll be Mark Twain who will coin the term miracle worker. And he call. He actually calls them that. And he's so amazed by what they have done.

They go on a vaudeville circuit and they present themselves to audiences all around America. Think about early, before radio and all these things. And Annie will come out and tell her story. Then she'll bring Helen out.

Helen has learned how to talk, you can imagine. She's learned how to. Without hearing Yourself. She's learned how to give speeches and to talk.

And then they'll take questions from the audience and Annie will tap in the question and Helen will answer. And that's how people, at first, they think it's kind of a fraud. This really can't. This couldn't have happened.

And they show people no by answering real questions, real time. This is a real thing. And so think of the change this made for so many disabled people.

Scott: 00:23:06

Well, and I thought that was so interesting because realistically, like, what kind of employment are you going to be able to get for someone like that?

So kind of timing with Annie helping Helen, and then Annie and Helen together as a unit, getting on this vaudeville circuit, which kind of was a way at the time to. To make some money. Right. I'm sure.

I'm sure they made some money touring around and also bringing awareness to this because that's kind of a little bit of what the vaudeville era was. And we've talked about other. Other characters, historic characters who were part of that vaudeville circuit at the time.

And that was a very, again, at the time, common way for folks to try to earn some money, put on a show, but also bring awareness. And like you said, this really brought some, Some true awareness.

And then because Helen lived a little bit longer, she got into the era within the United States where you could potentially be on radio, you could potentially be on TV or her. Her picture. And eventually she writes her. Her book. Right. Just super interesting seeing her from this late Civil War era family all the way through.

I mean, I think she passes in

Jenn: 00:24:27

s or she dies in: 1968

Scott: 00:24:29

Yeah. Which is crazy.

Jenn: 00:24:30

Crazy. She learns how to write. It's a lot of examples of Helen's writing in the house. Like, she learns how to write. Her.

She writes letters, she writes her name, she signs things. It's. She's just a really big advocate for people with disabilities.

Now people can see that these, that these people can be pulled out of whatever disability they have and they can actually learn and they can actually be a part of society. And Helen Keller shows that to everybody. She's actually a founding member of the aclu, the American Civil Liberties Union.

She advocates in Japan right after World War II for Japanese with disabilities. She's very much a humanitarian around the world. She writes 14 books in her lifetime.

them is the Story of My Life,: 1903

ove about this Movie, this is: 1962

There is a picture of Patty Duke who plays Helen Keller in the movie with the real Helen Keller.

Scott: 00:25:55

Oh, wow.

Jenn: 00:25:56

And both Ann Bancroft and Patty Duke, who play Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller win Oscars for the Miracle Worker. Excuse me, is that. But they do such a great job of depicting the moment, right? They do such a great job. I mean, they're winning best Actor awards.

Like, you can see how well they're depicting what that really looked like. And so if you want to go there for where that moment happened, Ivy Green is there for you to be in that moment. And that for me was just so magical.

And I really, I appreciate Helen Keller. I talk about her. I talk about her flying an airplane. As you know, me as a pilot, she got to. She flew an airplane for a little bit.

She didn't take off her land, but she flew it in the air. But I appreciated Annie Sullivan so much more when I went there and kind of understood more about her. It really, really resonated.

hem. Annie Sullivan passes in: 1936

Helen Keller will pass in: 1968

Scott: 00:27:22

Oh, that's cool.

Jenn: 00:27:23

So they actually have a depiction of Helen Keller's face and one of the pillars there. And they're all three of them there together.

So if you want to visit their final resting place, it's there in Washington D.C. but Ivy Green is there for you. It is a wonderful place to visit. It's a great stop. We definitely recommend it and celebrate these women of American history.

Scott: 00:27:47

As we leave the quiet grounds of Ivy Green and the white pillars of the house where Helen was born, it's hard to not feel the weight of what happened here. We often think of miracles as sudden flashes of light.

But as Jen showed us today, this miracle took a month and two days of relentless, stubborn devotion.

It was here that Annie Sullivan, a woman who had survived the darkness of a poor house and the loss of her own family, recognized the spark in a seven year old girl that everyone else had written off. Annie didn't just teach Helen how to spell, she gave her a world from the Wawa at the water pump to a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe.

Their story reminds us that no one is truly lost if there is someone brave enough to reach into the darkness and pull them. This has been a Walk With History production. Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny. Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk With History is supported by our community@thehistoryroadtrip.com our eternal thanks go out to our lifetime members to help keep us going.

Thank you to dougliverty, Larry Myers, Patrick Benny, Gale Cooper, Christy Coates, Calvin Gifford, Corny Cenini, Gene Noah, Larry Mitchell, Tommy Anderson, Susan Soulis, Bruce Lynch, Dino Garner, Mark Barrett, Don Kennedy, and John Simpson. Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player and we'll talk to you next time.