Today in Mighty Girl history, Anne Sullivan, famously known as the teacher and companion of Helen Keller for 49 years, was born today in 1866. The child of poor Irish immigrants, Sullivan herself went blind as a child due to untreated trachoma and was sent to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. Though her vision was partially restored after surgery, she remained visually impaired throughout her life.
After Sullivan graduated as class valedictorian, the school director recommended the 20-year-old for a position teaching 6-year-old Helen Keller in the small town of Tuscumbia, Alabama. Keller, who had been left blind and deaf due to disease as a toddler, had very limited means of communication but her young teacher soon helped her break out of, as Keller later described, the "silence and darkness that surrounded me." Continue reading Continue reading
