[oregon-l] Fw: [leadership] FW: AP story announcing "Helen Keller: A DaringAdventure"

Tue Apr 20 01:29:46 GMT 2010

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Thom, Jeff
To: leadership at acb.org
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 9:23 AM
Subject: [leadership] FW: AP story announcing "Helen Keller: A 
DaringAdventure"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Lisa Santamarina [mailto:LSantamarina at afb.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 9:21 AM
To: Cathy Burns; Christopher (Kit) J. Migel; Concetta Conkling; Cynthia 
Watson; Debbie Dennis; Elaine J. Pommells; Jacqueline Bird; James 
McLaughlin; James R. Fisher; Jane Parker; Thom, Jeff; John T. Bourger; 
Marjorie Kaiser; Michael N. Gilliam; Parveen K. Jain; Patirica Cary Sueltz; 
Pearl Van Zandt; Peter Tonks; Ray R. Fidler; Shafiq A. Khan; Thomas 
Wlodkowski ; William MacGowan; William R. Wiener
Subject: AP story announcing "Helen Keller: A Daring Adventure"

Below please find the Associated Press article announcing the Helen Keller 
exhibit at AFB's New York headquarters.  We are very pleased to report that 
it has already been picked up by the New York Times, Washington Post, San 
Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times and Guardian websites.  Carl Augusto and 
Helen Selsdon, AFB's archivist are both quoted throughout the piece.  Enjoy!

NYC exhibit tells the fuller story of Helen Keller

By ULA ILNYTZKY (AP)

NEW YORK - "Cat, cat, cold, cold, doll, doll" were Helen Keller's first 
handwritten words, and they represent an important moment in the remarkable 
life of a woman who helped bring about meaningful change for the disabled by 
writing incessantly to state Legislatures, Congress and presidents.

Written on a single page in a neat handwriting, the words are the first 
document to greet visitors at a new exhibition, "Helen Keller: A Daring 
Adventure," opening May 7 at the midtown Manhattan headquarters of the 
American Foundation for the Blind.

Elsewhere in the exhibit, a photograph shows a blind salesman operating a 
newsstand with an accompanying letter from Keller to President Franklin D. 
Roosevelt that says, "Work is the only way for the blind to forget the dark, 
and the obstacles in their path."

The foundation is letting the public see some of its vast Helen Keller 
holdings as part of a fundraising effort to digitize the archival collection 
totaling 80,000 letters, photographs, books and artifacts bequeathed by 
Keller, who worked for the foundation for 44 years.

Keller, whose childhood is depicted in the play and film "The Miracle 
Worker," lost her hearing and vision at 19 months. She wrote her first words 
when she was 7 years old, just 15 weeks after her beloved teacher, Anne 
Sullivan, arrived at the Keller household in 1887.

Her enormous progress is demonstrated in another letter just two years later 
in which she writes, "I study about the earth and the animals, and I like 
arithmetic exceedingly. I learn many new words too. Exceedingly is one that 
I learned yesterday."

The two documents are among 61 of Keller's personal items on display, 31 of 
which have never before been in a public exhibition. She joined the American 
Foundation for the Blind in 1924, three years after it was founded.

"This is an extraordinary event by our organization to provide this kind of 
public access," said Carl R. Augusto, the foundation's president.

Keller became "a prolific writer, a peacemaker, a passionate advocate, not 
just for blind and disabled people, but for equal rights," Augusto said.

Keller was constantly pushing for more and better programs, products and 
technologies for the disabled. Many services for the disabled today are due 
to her efforts, such as talking books, a uniform Braille system, increased 
Social Security payments for the blind and legislation that allowed visually 
impaired people to run newsstands.

Helen Selsdon, the foundation's archivist, hopes visitors will come to 
understand the breadth of Keller's accomplishments.

"She transcended her time. She was unflinching to her commitments to her 
ideals ... her activism," she said.

The press clippings, photographs, letters and artifacts in the exhibit 
demonstrate Keller's huge influence.

Keller knew great minds and leaders, from W.E.B. Du Bois to Albert Einstein 
to Dwight Eisenhower and could work with anyone, Selsdon said

"She did more than anyone hopes to do with all our senses. She flew around 
the world in the 1940s and '50s when she was in her 60s and 70s," Selsdon 
said.

Keller wrote to Roosevelt asking his support for the foundation's Talking 
Book Program. After he signed an executive order establishing the National 
Library Service for the Blind in 1935 that appropriated funds for the 
program, she thanked him, calling it "the most constructive aid to the blind 
since the invention of Braille."

She was born to a prominent Alabama family, and Alexander Graham Bell and 
Mark Twain were great admirers of hers. It was Twain who coined the phrase 
"miracle worker" in describing Sullivan's remarkable work with Keller.

Visitors will learn that Keller was not only an advocate for the disabled, 
but also a suffragette, socialist and an early member of the American Civil 
Liberties Union.

She was in favor of birth control as early as 1916, according to a letter 
she wrote to a socialist magazine defending anarchist Emma Goldman for 
advocating birth control. Two months earlier, in a letter to Keller, Goldman 
said she had been looking for "a big, brave American woman" for 25 years and 
"you are among the very few."

And in a 1933 letter to German students who burned her book "How I Became a 
Socialist" she wrote: "History has taught you nothing if you think you can 
kill ideas."

She also visited 35 countries, helping to open schools and revolutionize 
services for the blind. The gifts she received from dignitaries and admirers 
are part of the exhibition. Among those being shown for the first time are a 
silver-bound bible from her 1952 visit to Israel and a Zulu shield with an 
accompanying letter from the tribe that says the shield "is an equipment of 
a great warrior and that is how we think of you."

Keller died in 1968 at age 87, four years after receiving the nation's 
highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom.

Augusto imagines that if she were alive today, she would be leading the 
foundation in expanding the use of technology to people with disabilities.

Other personal effects on display include Keller's desk, a phone that 
provided her with a direct link to the fire department and her 1955 honorary 
Oscar for the documentary based on her life, "Helen Keller in Her Story."

The exhibition, running through July 30, is accessible to people with vision 
loss. The foundation said it hopes to feature additional material from the 
archive in future exhibitions.

On the Net:

  a.. American Foundation for the Blind: http://www.afb.org

Lisa Santamarina, PHR

Human Resources & Board Relations Administrator

American Foundation for the Blind

2 Penn Plaza, Suite 1102

New York, NY 10121

T. 212-502-7608

lsantamarina at afb.net

This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are intended only for the 
person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential 
material and/or material protected by law. Any retransmission or use of this 
information may be a violation of that law. If you received this in error, 
please contact the sender and delete the material from your computer.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
leadership mailing list
leadership at acb.org
http://www.acb.org/mailman/listinfo/leadership