From the archives: Helen Keller, 'wonder woman of senses,’ visits Des Moines on New Year's Day 1922

Editor’s note: This article by Des Moines Register reporter Harlan S. Miller was originally published on Jan. 2, 1922. Helen Keller was in Des Moines for a week of stage performances at the Orpheum theater.

Brilliant blue sightless eyes – the eyes of Helen Keller, wonder woman of education under difficulties, gazed across the lobby of Hotel Fort Des Moines as though fixed on invisible objectives.

“To the people of Des Moines, I wish a happy New Year; a year of cheer and prosperity; the best kind of a year that your people could wish for themselves,” she said.

The words traveled through her throat and emerged from her mouth with a mechanical sound, a mechanical articulation, a voice of a machine. But strangely, too, they carried the sound of a benediction.

Keller, whom the average well-informed man would readily number among the half dozen most famous women on earth, is appearing at a local theater this week.

Stricken sightless, speechless and deaf by an illness when a babe of 19 months, Keller, in her gradual grasp of 20th-century culture, through the guidance of her lifelong teacher Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan, has been a modern miracle.

In 1887, Sullivan took charge of the education of the inarticulate, super-isolated 7-year-old child. Her parents, descendants of old New England and Virginia families, had despaired of bringing her into any liaison with life. In 1904, 17 years later, Keller graduated from Radcliffe College after a regular four-year course with a bachelor’s degree.

For 40 years the eyes of Helen Keller have not seen anything. For 40 years the ears of Helen Keller have not heard any sound.

But a few years ago the miracle of speech was accomplished for Keller, who is now 41 years old. Patient training of her tongue, lips and vocal cords by Sullivan and C.A. White, of the New England Conservatory of Music, have accomplished the feat.

Keller has a wide acquaintance with French and English classics, she is a student of philosophy and economics, and has written several books. She is a member of many bodies for the education of the blind.

With Sullivan ill at her Des Moines hotel, her secretary, Miss Polly Thompson, guides Keller through her stage appearance. Keller listens in two ways – by keeping her fingers on the lips of the speaker and by a sign language conveyed to her palm and fingers by the sense of touch.