Ivy Green – Helen Keller’s Home

Posted by admin on December 30, 2010 under Active Organizations, Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan, Web links | Be the First to Comment

At a plain, black well-pump in the small southern town of Tuscumbia, Alabama, one of the world’s great miracles took place. It began one bright, spring day in 1887. Puffy white clouds floated overhead on a background of blue, while birds fluttered through oaks and maples and flowers burst forth from the fertile soil in an array of colors—all unheard and unseen by a pretty girl of seven.

Standing at the totally blind and deaf Helen Keller’s side was a young woman, Anne Sullivan. Miss Sullivan was steadily pumping cool water into one of the girl’s hands while repeatedly tapping out an alphabet code of five letters in the other—first slowly, then rapidly. The scene was repeated again and again as young Helen painstakingly struggled to break her world of silence.

Suddenly the signals crossed Helen’s consciousness with a meaning. She knew that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the cool something flowing over her hand. Darkness began to melt from her mind like so much ice left out on the sunny March day. By nightfall, Helen had learned 30 words.

Since 1954 Helen Keller’s birthplace has been a permanent shrine to the “miracle” that occurred in a blind and deaf seven-year old girl’s life. At that time Ivy Green was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

http://www.helenkellerbirthplace.org/