Shortly Brief originally Joanna Mansfield Sullivan: Educator. Born on April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. Anne Sullivan is best known for her work with Helen Keller, a deaf and blind child that she taught to communicate. She had a difficult childhood, growing up in brutal poverty. An untreated eye infection led her to lose most of her sight at the age of seven. Two years later, her mother died from tuberculosis. After her mother’s death, Sullivan was eventually sent to live at the Tewksbury Almshouse, a home for the poor.
Anne Sullivan left Tewksbury and went to the Perkins School for the Blind in 1880. While attending the school, she had two surgeries that restored some of her vision. In 1886, she left Perkins to go work for the Keller family in Tuscumbia, Alabama. At the age of 21, Sullivan began working Helen Keller, an intelligent, but willful young girl who was both deaf and blind. She made her first breakthrough with Keller by spelling out the word “water” as water rushed over her other hand.
The two continued working together for the rest of Anne Sullivan’s life. She helped Keller get a college degree at Radcliffe College. Even after Sullivan married John A. Macy in 1905, she continued to be Keller’s companion. The three lived together in a farmhouse in Massachusetts for a time. While the marriage eventually petered out, the bond between Sullivan and Keller remained strong. She supported Keller in her many writing and public speaking endeavors.
Anne Sullivan struggled with her health in her later years and even had to have one of her eyes removed. She died on October 20, 1936, in Forest Hills, New York. Her work with Keller was immortalized in the 1959 play The Miracle Worker, which was later turned into a film starring Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft.
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