Annie Sullivan Macy:"Keep on beginning and failing. . ."

. .. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.

"Only when we have worked purposefully and long on a problem that interests us, and in hope and in despair wrestled with it in silence and alone relying on our own unshaken will—only then have we achieved education."

Known as the "Teacher" who taught Helen Keller to speak, read, and communicate - though she was blind, deaf, and mute - Anne Sullivan's own traumatic life has remained in the shadows. The eldest daughter of poor, illiterate, and unskilled Irish immigrants, she was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts on April 14, 1866. Raised in extreme poverty, Anne was the eldest of five children, only two of whom reached adulthood. Her father, Thomas Sullivan, was an alcoholic and her mother, Alice Chloesy Sullivan, died from tuberculosis when Anne was 9 years old.

When Anne was 7 years old she developed trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyes. This infection went untreated and affected her vision. She had almost no usable sight until she had an operation at the age of 15, which restored some of her vision, but she remained visually impaired for the rest of her life.

After her mother's death in January 1874, family life became problematic. After living with various relatives for two years, their father abandoned them and Annie and her younger brother were sent to the Tewksbury Almshouse, an institution that housed poor and needy people. Anne was just 10 years old at the time. Their sister was sent to live with an aunt. Annie's brother died three months later in the Almshouse, and it appears that Anne never saw her sister again.

Tewksbury was infamous for housing drunks, prostitutes, the insane, and the incurably ill. After many complaints, state inspectors visited, and Annie took it upon herself to plead to be sent to school; the one dream left to the blind, destitute orphan was that she would be able to get an education. She already had endured several unsuccessful eye operations to restore her sight, but she was not going to resign herself to living in an institution for the rest of her life.
"I have endured much physical pain, and I can feel real pity for any one who suffers. The misfortunes of the disinherited of the world rouse in me not only compassion but a fierce indignation," she said of her experiences at Tewksbury.

The head of the investigation team saw to it that Annie was sent to the Perkins School for the Blind. She entered at age 14 at the elementary school level and graduated at the top of her class at age 20. When she was 15, another eye operation was successful, but she had limited sight all her life.

After graduation, a teacher recommended the feisty, stubborn, gifted young woman (age 21) for a job in Alabama where a little blind, deaf, and mute child needed a teacher. Little did she know what she was getting into. Her work with Helen Keller opened the door to education and meaningful lives for people who formerly had been institutionalized because of their severe disabilities. . .

This excerpt is from the American Foundation for the Blind's Virtual Museum honoring Annie Sullivan Macy. Read more of the fascinating story . . share your knowledge of this hero with us.