Page 33 - English Reader - 7

Helen Keller became a champion for the blinds and participated in speaking out against such things
as child labour and capital punishment. She spent much of her life on lecture tours with her teacher
and companion, Anne Sullivan.

Helen Keller died at the age of eighty-eight on June 1 1968. Her legacy lives on.
Here are some excerpts from Lilli Palmer’s meeting with Helen Keller in 1950.
One day in the summer of 1950, our neighbour, Contessa Margot Besozzi, who out of necessity also
owned a jeep, called to say that her cousin had arrived in town with a companion. She requested me
to go and fetch the two old ladies in my jeep as her own jeep had conked out.

“Whom should I ask for at the hotel?” I asked.
“Miss Helen Keller.”
“Who? Margot, you don’t mean the Helen Keller!” I gaped.

“Of course, she is my cousin.” Margot said.
As I drove the jeep, my thoughts went to the time when I was twelve years old. My father gave me a
book about Helen Keller written by Anne Sullivan, her teacher.
Over the years, I read about Helen Keller in the newspapers. I knew that Alle Sullivan was no longer
with her and that a new companion now accompanited her everywhere.

As I reached the hotel, the two women were waiting for me at the hotel terrace. Polly Thomson,
Helen Keller’s companion was a tall buxom woman. Helen Keller, in her seventies, was a slight, white-
haired woman with wide-open blue eyes and a shy smile.
“How do you do?” she offered her hand.
I took her hand which she was holding too high because she did not know how tall I was. She made
this mistake with people she was meeting for the first time, but she never made it twice because
later when we said good-bye, she had put her hand firmly into mine at exactly the right level.

After the luggage was loaded in the back of the jeep, Miss Thomson sat beside it. Helen Keller was
seated on the front seat next to me. Only then did it dawn on me that this was going to be a risky
undertaking. The jeep was open and the road had steep curves. There was nothing actually to which
she could hold on to.

I turned to Helen Keller and said, “Miss Keller, I must prepare you – we are going up a very steep hill.
Can you hold tight to this piece of metal on the windshield?”
However, she continued to look expectantly straight ahead. Behind me, Miss Thomson said patiently,
“She can’t hear you, dear nor see you. I know it is hard to get used to it at first.”
I was so embarrassed that I stammered like an idiot, trying to explain the problem ahead of us. All
the while, Miss Keller never turned her head. She sat motionless, a slight smile on her face, patiently
waiting. Miss Thomson knelt across the luggage and reached for her hand. Rapidly she moved Helen’s
fingers up, down, and sideways, telling her in blind-deaf language what I had just said.

“I don’t mind,” said Helen, laughing, “I’ll hold tight.”
The ride was rough. But there were no complaints from Helen. She actually was enjoying the ride.
She warbled happily, “This is fun.” Her thin white hair had come undone and fluttered about her
face, and she was enjoying the crazy ride like a child riding up and down on a wooden horse on a
merry-go-round.

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