A rare photo of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan

By MELISSA TRUJILLO, Associated Press Writer

This 1888 photo released by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston shows Helen Keller when she was eight years old, left, holding hands with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, during a summer vacation to Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod. A staff member at the society discovered the photograph in a large photography collection recently donated to the society. When Sullivan arrived at the Keller household to teach Helen, she gave her a doll as a present. Although Keller had many dolls throughout her childhood, this is believed to be the first known photograph of Helen Keller with one of her dolls. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the Thaxter P. Spencer Collection, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, New England Historic Genealogical Society-Boston)

BOSTON – Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod. The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

Experts on Keller’s life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll — the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 — according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.

“It’s really one of the best images I’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Foundation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. “This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie.”

For more than a century, the photograph has belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.

Spencer’s mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.

Spencer, who doesn’t know which of his relatives took the picture, told the society that his mother, four years younger than Helen, remembered Helen exploring her face with her hands.

In June, Spencer donated a large collection of photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the genealogical society, which preserves artifacts from New England families for future research.

“I never thought much about it,” Spencer said in a statement released by the society. “It just seemed like something no one would find very interesting.” Spencer has recently been hospitalized and could not be reached for comment.

It wasn’t until recently that staff at the society realized the photograph’s significance. Advocates for the blind say they had never heard of it, though after they announced its discovery Wednesday they learned it had published in 1987 in a magazine on Cape Cod and a half-century earlier in The Boston Globe. It is unclear whether there was more than one copy of the photograph.

D. Brenton Simons, the society’s president and CEO, said the photograph offers a glimpse of what was a very important time in Keller’s life.

Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1 1/2. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.

While “doll” was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word “water,” as famously depicted in the film “The Miracle Worker.” Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.

“The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it’s a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne’s life,” Seymour-Ford said.

Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller’s childhood: that devotion, Sullivan’s push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen’s attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan’s arrival as her teacher.

“It’s a beautiful composition,” she said. “It’s not even the individual elements. It’s the fact that it has all of the components.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080306/ap_on_re_us/helen_keller_photograph

Sign Language Barbie Doll

 

In 1999, Sign Language Barbie was developed in partnership with the National Center of Deafness at California State University to ensure the doll instructed sign language accurately and was not offensive to deaf people or those hard of hearing. They are rare to be found at the stores. You might want to read more about Sign Language Barbie Doll, click: http://www.calstate.edu/newsline/Archive/99-00/000605-Nor.shtml

Graham Hicks, Deaf-Blind motorcyclist broke the Guinness World Record

The quadbike world record attempt with Graham Hicks driving and Matt Coulter riding pillion.

On 21st May 2001, Graham ‘G-Force’ Hicks from Peterborough, who is totally deaf and blind made it into the record books again. On the two mile airstrip at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground in Leicestershire, Graham set the first ever quadbike world speed record at 99.26mph! He broke the record for the fasted speed on a quad bike and fastest England to Holland on a jetski. Mike Coulter rode behind guiding him by means of touch.

Graham became blind when he was 3 year old. At age of five, he became deaf. If the people need to talk with Graham, they need to use the fingerspelling. Fingerspelling, the Deafblind Manual Alphabet is a method of spelling out words onto a deafblind person’s hand. A particular sign or place on the hand represents each letter.

To learn more about Graham Hicks, go to http://deafblind-access.com/6.html

 

A deaf and blind man who has travelled 300 miles by land and sea has completed his journey on a jet ski.

Nellie Zabel Willhite – First Deaf Female Pilot

Nellie Zabel Willhite
1892—1991

Nellie Zabel Willhite was South Dakota’s first woman pilot. Born in 1892, she became deaf two years later after contracting measles. She began flying at the age of 35, Nellie enrolled in aviation school and became the State of South Dakota’s first female pilot and probably the world’s first licensed pilot ever who was almost completely deaf. Nellie’s father bought a plane for her: an open-cockpit Alexander Eagle Rock OX-5 biplane. She christened it “Pard”, her dad’s nickname. She once said: “Even though I could barely hear the engine roar, I could tell right away if anything was wrong – just from the vibrations.” She earned a living as a “barnstormer”, doing air shows, races and giving rides to whomever wanted one. She was outstanding in the tight, fast maneuvering necessary in balloon target racing in which pilots would fly into balloons to burst them. Nellie worked as a commercial pilot until she was 52. She founded the South Dakota chapter of the “Ninety-Nines”, a group of pioneering women flyers. She was a charter member of the national organization when Amelia Earhart was the president. Shortly before her death, she was inducted into the South Dakota Aviation Hall of Fame.

Her plane was a long-wing Alexander Eaglerock built in 1928 and was a favorite aircraft for barnstorming popular in those days. The Southerm Museum of Flight in Birmingham, Alabama proudly displays Nellie’s “Pard” in its Early Aviation Hanger. The Eaglerock is one of only five (5) remaining models of this type.

Beautiful Deaf Art

“The Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II (Brother of Queen Marie Antoinette),
Visiting l’Abbé de l’Epée and the Pupils in Paris, France, 1777”
© by Jean Boutcher, 1992