Our program for October will be “Anne Sullivan: Helen Keller’s Teacher,” presented by Phyllis Chapman. [private]Chapman brings history and notable Americans to life through living history “personifications” of some of the most fascinating and influential people. In period correct costume, and speaking in the first person, she introduces you to people you could never meet anywhere (or any-when!) else.
As a child in late nineteenth-century America, Anne Sullivan couldn’t have had the odds stacked against her any higher: a child of a poverty-stricken Irish family in Massachusetts, orphaned when her mother died and her father deserted the family, and nearly blind from the effects of the eye disease trachoma. Sent to a gruesome poorhouse for six years, she finally managed to gain assistance to enter the Perkins School of the Blind and graduate as its Valedictorian four years later.
Resentful and argumentative, she seemed an unlikely candidate to succeed in liberating a seven-year old Helen Keller from her deaf-blind prison, but in doing so, both she and Helen flourished- Helen as a writer and activist, and Anne, with her innovative methodology of teaching the handicapped.
The meeting will be held Monday, October 17 at 7:30 pm, Berlin First Baptist Church Fellowship Hall, 15 North Main St., Berlin, NY. The meeting is open to the public and free of charge. Refreshments will be served.[/private]