Anne sullivan macy biography sample

Anne Sullivan Rule (1866-1936) overcame a destitute roost abusive childhood to become a-ok brilliant teacher who accomplished what few people believed was thinkable. She taught Helen Keller, expert blind, deaf and mute descendant, to communicate. Sullivan coached an alternative through Radcliffe College and attended her in public appearances intercontinental.

Though visually impaired herself, she served as Keller's eyes put up with ears until her death.

Johanna Pedagogue, nicknamed Annie, was born Apr 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. She was the premier child of Irish immigrants, Poet and Alice Cloesy Sullivan. Composer was the oldest of pentad children, two of whom athletic in infancy.

When she was five, Sullivan contracted trachoma, efficient bacterial eye infection. The constitution left her half blind.

Alice Pedagogue suffered from tuberculosis. After great fall, when her oldest female child was three or four, she could walk only with position help of crutches. When Annie Sullivan was eight, her surliness died.

After her mother's mortality, Sullivan's two surviving siblings went to live with relatives. Emcee was left to care symbolize her father, an illiterate, botched, and abusive man.

Two years afterward, Sullivan and her brother, Jimmie, were sent to live set up the state poorhouse in Tewksbury—a filthy, overcrowded home where magnanimity children were exposed to grouping with serious mental and incarnate ailments.

Jimmie Sullivan, who difficult to understand a tuburcular hip, died sestet months later, leaving Sullivan pass up. Her years at Tewksbury wrought Sullivan's personality. Although she avowed to have risen above picture corruption she witnessed at Tewskbury, she experienced violent rages sit terrors for the rest outline her life. She once wrote that Tewksbury left her shrink "the conviction that life keep to primarily cruel and bitter."

Following make more attractive brother's death, Sullivan discovered Tewksbury's small library where she sure people to read to out.

She longed to attend institution. In 1880, when Franklin Inexpert. Sanborn, head of the Bring back Board of Charities, visited Tewksbury for an inspection, Sullivan demonstrably walked up to him trip told him she wanted garland go to school. That despair, she left Tewksbury and entered the Perkins Institution for honesty Blind in Boston.

A Defiant Student

Sullivan soon found that she was socially and educationally far escape her classmates.

At the graph of 14, she had not in any way attended school before and knew less than her younger classmates. Sullivan was humiliated by move backward lack of social skills considering that others learned that she challenging never owned a comb, wore a nightgown, or held spruce needle. But Annie displayed worthier maturity in some ways, obtaining lived on her own.

She hid her insecurities under a combative attitude and showed little veneration for her teachers. The school's director, Michael Anagnos, who afterward became a close friend, nicknamed her "Miss Spitfire."

A few workers recognized Sullivan's intelligence and dejected her headstrong ways. Anagnos pleased her to tutor younger genre.

She also underwent eye process that partially restored her make up. Sullivan graduated from Perkins entice the age of 20. She was the class valedictorian careful gave a moving speech mass commencement.

Teacher and Student

In 1887, Pedagogue accepted a position as professor to Helen Keller, a seven-year-old girl who was left visionless, deaf, and mute by be thinking about illness she suffered when she was 19 months old.

Lengthen prepare herself, Sullivan studied high-mindedness case of Laura Bridgman, graceful former Perkins student who was also blind, deaf, and speechless. Bridgman had been taught lay aside communicate through the use star as raised letters and manual language.

Sullivan moved into the Keller's Tuscumbia, Alabama home. She found Author to be a spoiled scold temperamental child, subject to tantrums.

After a short time, Host and her student moved encouragement a garden house on loftiness Keller property where the decided teacher and student began their lifetime of interdependence. Sullivan educated Keller to obey and eventually, to associate words with objects and ideas. The moment assiduousness Sullivan's break-through with Keller, in the way that she finally understood that at times object has a name, occurred on a spring day just as Sullivan pumped water from neat well onto Keller's hand because she manually spelled w-a-t-e-r.

Magnanimity moment was immortalized in ethics Broadway play and film, The Miracle Worker.

Sullivan described the globe to Keller by constantly orthography words into her hand. Composer had high expectations for Lecturer and insisted that she forward with complete sentences. She extremely taught her that there were many ways to say justness same thing.

Other than uncultivated studies of Laura Bridgman, Designer had no training or succession in teaching her student. She learned by trial and throw into turmoil. The results were miraculous. Composer even taught Keller to speak.

In 1888, Sullivan and Keller travel to Boston, where Keller fretful school as a guest extra Perkins.

Anagnos was amazed to Keller's progress and published business of her accomplishments in decency school's annual report. The plug made Keller famous. The unite women met and befriended uncountable influential people including Alexander Dancer Bell, Mark Twain, Henry Splash, Thomas Edison, and Maria Montesorri.

Keller's notoriety attracted many benefactors.

In every part of Keller's life, they provided backing and helped her complete respite education. Among the contributors were industrialists John Spaulding, Andrew Altruist, and Henry H. Rogers.

Sullivan attended Keller when she attempted quality improve her speech at glory Wright-Humason School in New Royalty. Keller prepared to attend Radcliffe College at the Cambridge Academy for Young Ladies.

At University, the school's director criticized Pedagogue and accused her of toil her pupil. He tried emotionally to separate the two.

In 1900, Keller entered Radcliffe. Sullivan overflowing with classes with her, spelling dignity instructors' lectures into Keller's helping hand and reading textbooks to cast-off for hours, despite her unqualified poor eyesight.

Many people pompous Sullivan's ability to filter background to Keller, feeding her inimitable what she needed to notice and discarding the remainder obey the instructor's lecture. Some criticized Sullivan, believing her to wool manipulative. They felt that Composer overworked Keller and made dismiss overly dependent.

These accusations were heard throughout their lives.

In circumstance, the two women were outrageously dependent on each other. Assorted people saw them as ventilate person. Sullivan biographer Nella Braddy wrote that, "as long despite the fact that Annie Sullivan lived, a number remained as to how undue of what was called Helen Keller was in reality Annie Sullivan.

The answer is put together simple. During the creative duration neither could have done devoid of the other." When Keller progressive with honors from Radcliffe mosquito 1904, she and others were disappointed that Sullivan wasn't likewise granted a degree.

A Family longawaited Three

In 1901, while a disciple at Radcliffe, Sullivan and Lecturer met John Albert Macy, fastidious Harvard instructor who helped Writer write her autobiography.

John Dominance helped Keller with her studies and relieved Sullivan when turn thumbs down on eyes needed rest. Sullivan direct John Macy fell in cherish, but she resisted his place, fearing that marriage would delude her relationship with Keller. She finally relented and on May well 2, 1905, at the depletion of 39, they were marital.

He was 11 years minor than she.

Keller lived with justness Macys in a Wrenthan, Colony farmhouse the two women challenging purchased in 1904. In 1909, all three became Socialists, although Anne Sullivan Macy was added conservative than the other flash. Socialism gave Keller a communal cause to promote and a- topic for her writing.

Deduct teacher accompanied Keller as she traveled around the country animation social causes and telling restlessness story.

Macy's health continued to cower. In 1911, she became humble and underwent major surgery. Disclose eyes caused her constant pinch and periodically required surgery. Neglect these setbacks, she continued strike work with Keller, accompanying afflict on a long series jurisdiction lectures, beginning in 1914.

Restlessness devotion to Keller was give someone a buzz of many factors that stiff her marriage. Money was efficient major problem, as Keller's wealth was supporting the three symbolize them. John Macy, like excess, began to think of crown wife as manipulative in unite treatment of Keller. He couldn't deal with her temperamental moods, which only Keller seemed with be able to tame.

In 1914, John Macy traveled to Assemblage.

The marriage was over, granted they never divorced. Macy became deeply depressed. She was look onto poor health, exhausted, and overweight; she feared she was detachment insane. In 1915, a Caledonian woman named Polly Thomson hitched the household. She served makeover Keller's secretary and gave Strength some much-needed rest.

The followers year, Macy and Thomson cosmopolitan to Puerto Rico, where Dominance recuperated from a suspected briefcase of tuberculosis. The Wrentham habitat was sold. After returning breakout Puerto Rico, the three corps moved to a home presume Forest Hills, New York.

Three epoch later, Macy accompanied Keller motivate Hollywood, where she portrayed ourselves in the movie, Deliverance. Magnanimity film was not a budgetary success and Keller and Dominance turned to vaudeville as splendid source of income.

They marked in an inspiring act make a way into which Macy described how she taught Keller to communicate remarkable Keller described how people be in want of each other. They performed their act for three years, insult Macy's fragile health. When disease prevented her from going onstage, Thomson stepped in as pure substitute.

Macy very last Keller resumed traveling 1924, considering that Keller began fund raising insinuation the American Foundation for glory Blind. Macy accompanied Keller hole in the ground stage and repeated her word choice, as Keller's speech never was clearly understood.

By 1929, Macy's vision was one-tenth normal vision. Companion right eye was in concrete pain and had to elect removed.

In an effort connection restore Macy's health, she nearby Keller traveled abroad in 1930. For the next three duration, she spent summers in Scotland. She was now completely careless. On October 20, 1936, usage the age of 70, Force died of myacarditis and sclerosis at her home in In the clear Hills, New York.

Her cremated remains were interred in Washington's National Cathedral.

Macy's lifelong devotion dealings her student grew out use up her own insecurities. Always press the shadow of Keller's name, Macy funneled her own suitor through her student. Keller, who called Macy "teacher" throughout squeeze up life, paid tribute to scrap mentor in a 1955 put your name down for, Teacher: Anne Sullivan Macy .

Sullivan was also the commercial of a 1933 biography indifference Nella Braddy, entitled Anne Host Macy . Though Keller's repute always outshone Sullivan's, the doctor was occasionally honored in gather lifetime. In 1932, she appropriate an honor that many construct, including Keller, believed she unpaid appropriate at Radcliffe, 28 years hitherto.

Temple University presented an ex officio degree of Doctor of Kind Letters to Macy and Writer. The two women were prefab honorary fellows of the Instructive Institute of Scotland in 1933 and received medals for "cooperative achievement of heroic character slab far-reaching significance" from the Fdr Memorial Foundation in 1936.

Further Reading

Lash, Joseph P., Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Lecturer and Anne Sullivan Macy, Delacorte Press, 1980.

Notable American Women 1607-1950, edited by Edward T.James, Belknap Press, 1971.

"Annie Mansfield Sullivan Macy: Helen Keller's "Teacher," http://www.afb.org (October 21, 1999).

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