Long Island Daily Press
Item Information
- Title:
- Long Island Daily Press
- Description:
-
Famous Teacher Succumbs in Forest Hills Anne Sullivan Macy is dead. Helen Keller goes on alone. For the first time in the 40 years, since she was a helpless child of seven, Helen Keller today is without her teacher, companion, and friend. Mrs. Macy died at 7:50 this morning in Miss Keller's home at 71-11 Seminole avenue, Forest Hills, where they have lived together since 1917. She was 70. Mrs. Macy because ill last summer but seemed to be recovering until last week when she suffered a relapse. It was evident to her friends that the end was near. By her side when she died was Miss Keller and Polly Thompson, Miss Keller's secretary. Mrs. Macy was heroic and self-effacing and as a result of her teaching, Miss Keller, blind, deaf and mute from childhood, became an intellectual marvel, Mrs. Macy's life was poured into Helen Keller's triumphs. On Monday next - the anniversary of the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt - Mrs. Macy and Miss Keller were to have received the medals for "a cooperative achievement of heroic character and farreaching significance - the release and development of an imprisoned impersonality which, but its emergence and its effective activity, has become a symbol of hope and an inspiration to effort." Mrs. Macy was born in 1866, daughter of poor Irish immigrants who settled in Massachusetts. Her childhood held little happiness. Added to the terrors of a drunken father, who, after his tubercular wife died, called on the devil to choke all his children who raised their voices above a whisper, was the little girl's realization that her own eyes were not like those of other children. Anne Sullivan was taken to an almshouse where was reared, until it was discovered she was (Continued on Page Two) 'My Teacher is Free' Helen Keller, world-famous sightless educator overwhelmed with grief at the death of her teacher and companion, Mrs. Anne Sullivan Macy, today issued a statement through her friends in which she said: "My teacher is free at last from pain and blindness. I pray for strength to endure the silent dark until she smiles upon me again." "She has gone from me a little while but I shall feel her presence anew when my eyes are blessed with light, my ears saved unto harmony and my imprisoned life set free."
- Name on Item:
-
Long Island Daily Press
- Date:
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1936
- Format:
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Newspapers
- Genre:
-
Clippings
- Location:
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Perkins School for the Blind
Samuel P. Hayes Research Library - Collection (local):
-
Condolence Letters and Clippings
- Subjects:
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Blind
Perkins School for the Blind
- Permalink:
- https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/b85163961
- Terms of Use:
-
Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA
Contact host institution for more information.
- Notes:
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Newspaper clipping from October 26, 1936. Headline: Anne Sullivan Macy is Dead at 70; Helen Keller's Life Companion. Photograph of Helen Keller with Mrs. Macy.
- Accession #:
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AG88-n-3
