ANNE SULLIVAN

'Anne Sullivan', 'Annie Sullivan', or 'Johanna Mansfield Sullivan Macy', (April 14, 1866 – October 20, 1936) was a teacher best known as the tutor of Helen Keller.

Contents

Biography

External links

Biography

Anne Sullivan was born in Feeding Hills, a subsection of the town of Agawam, Massachusetts. Her parents, Thomas Sullivan and Alice Clohessy, were poor Irish cooks who left Ireland in 1847 because of the Irish Potato Famine. Sullivan’s father taught her Irish tradition and folklore. Her mother, suffering from tuberculosis, died when she was nine, and when she was ten, Anne had to move in with a relative. Later her relatives sent her and her brother to the Tewksbury Almshouse. Sullivan spent all her time there with her younger brother Jimmie in hopes that they would never be separated; however, his condition resulting from a tubercular hip weakened him and he died a few months later.
When Sullivan was three she began having trouble with her eyesight; at age five, she contracted the eye disease trachoma, a bacterial infection that often causes blindness by scarring. Sullivan underwent a long string of surgeries. Doctors in Tewksbury had made a few vain attempts to clean her eyelids. Later, Father Barbara, the chaplain of the nearest hospital, took it upon himself to arrange a procedure at his hospital. This operation failed to correct her vision. Still more attempts were made. Father Barbara took her to the Boston City Infirmary this time, where she had two more operations. Even after this attempt her vision remained blurry. Sullivan returned to Tewksbury, against her will. After four years there, in 1880, she entered the Perkins School for the Blind where she underwent surgery and regained some of her sight. After regaining her eyesight and graduating as class valedictorian in 1886, the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, Michael Anagnos, encouraged her to teach Helen Keller.[1]
She taught Keller the names of things with the sign language alphabet signed into Keller's palm. In 1888, they went to the Perkins Institution together, then New York City's Wright-Humasen School, then the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, and finally to Radcliffe College. Keller graduated from Radcliffe in 1904 and after that, they moved together to Wrentham, Massachusetts, and lived on a benefactor's farm.
In 1905, Sullivan married a Harvard University professor, John A. Macy, who had helped Keller with her autobiography. Macy soon died at the age of 55 in 1932. Sullivan stayed with Keller at her home and joined her on tours. In 1935, she became completely blind. She died in Forest Hills, New York, on October 20, 1936.

External links

★ Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker, a multimedia museum from the American Foundation for the Blind

★ Anne Sullivan biography

★ Anne Sullivan Macy: Recommended Reading

★ Chronology of Anne Sullivan's Life

★ Anne Sullivan Biography

★ Film about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan

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★ Sensing Annie Sullivan by Kimberly Bird