The world views Helen Keller as one of its guardian angels, but under the icon was a woman who longed for romance. In 1916, she fell in love with Peter Fagan, a committed socialist who had served as Helen’s secretary when Anne had taken ill. Fearing the disapproval of both her teacher and mother, the couple planned an elopement. However, when a Boston reporter discovered a newspaper entry of the marriage license, his article on the romance alerted Kate Keller, who ordered Fagan out of the house and ended the love affair. This may have been because she believed there had to be an ulterior motive for a younger man to wed her deaf-blind daughter. Another reason was the prevailing belief that a wife’s job was to be caregiver to her husband and child, and Kate assumed this was a role her daughter could not fulfill. Helen wrote of her loss, “The love which had come, unseen and unexpected, departed with tempest on his wings. A little island of joy surrounded by dark waters.” Years later her enforced spinsterhood remained a painful wound, and she said that if she could see, “I would marry first of all.”
Rather than dwell on what she had been cruelly cheated, Helen lived life to the fullest. In this way, she had no time to dwell on her misfortunes and steadfastly shunned pity. None was needed. She performed improbable feats, such as riding horseback, and became an example of unquenchable will. She stated, “My life has been happy because I have had wonderful friends and plenty of interesting work to do. I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times, but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. The wind passes, and the flowers are content.”
What brought her the most satisfaction was her advocacy of social issues, even when they brought umbrage in its wake. She criticized fellow Southerner Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind for overlooking the brutality of slavery and cheered the protestors for better conditions for workers. She was a suffragette and birth control advocate, a supporter of the NAACP and co-founder of the ACLU. In the 1950s, she made an enemy of Senator Joseph McCarthy as an ardent advocate of the right to practice whatever ideology one chose.
Helen was an ardent opponent of fascism prior to World War II and worked with soldiers who had been blinded, her life a testament of hope despite disability. Her remarkable achievements flew in the face of Adolph Hitler’s Aktion T4, a Nazi-run program of involuntary euthanasia for those afflicted with physical or mental handicaps. Her outspoken denunciation of the dictator was why his Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, included Keller’s works in his book-burnings, which Time termed a “bibliocaust.”
One of Helen’s darkest days came in 1936 when her beloved teacher passed away at their shared home in Forest Hills, Queens. After a half-century, she had to say goodbye to the woman whose hands had been her bridge to the world. The depth of her devotion was apparent with her tribute: “Teacher is free at least from pain and blindness. I pray for strength to endure the silent dark until she smiles upon me again.” The many who loved Helen feared with her beloved teacher’s loss she would fall apart, but Anne had taught her well—she determined to still rise.
Helen’s prayer was answered, and she persevered after Anne’s passing. She continued to lecture and travel, helped by her secretary Polly Thompson, touching the faces of kings, presidents, and world leaders, such as Winston Churchill and Golda Meir. In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, honoring her as a model of courage and determination. But most important to her was her campaign devoted to improving the lives of the handicapped.
Helen’s life ended just before her eighty-eighth birthday in 1968 at her Connecticut home, Arcan Ridge. A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, where her ashes were laid to rest next to her constant companion, Anne Sullivan. Her home state of Alabama honored their distinguished daughter by putting her likeness on their state quarter, the only circulating US coin to feature Braille. She is portrayed sitting on a chair, book in lap, with a ribbon emblazed with the words Spirit of Courage.
From a childhood that seemed destined to cage her forever in a sightless and soundless world, her indomitable dedication to the spirit of still I rise made her one of the world’s most respected and revered of women. She remains an enduring symbol of triumph over crushing adversity. Perhaps her biography can be encapsulated by her first spoken sentence, “It is warm.”
CHAPTER 3: THE STEPPING STONE (1891)
When a bride pledged “for better or for worse, in sickness or in health,” she never imagined how strongly she would be tested in honoring her vows. Her roller coaster marriage made her the most famous anonymous woman of her era, and though childless, she was the mother of thousands. Throughout her long life, she remained a paragon of selflessness, content to serve as a stepping stone.
Contrary to Andy Warhol’s prediction that everyone has fifteen minutes of fame, most people are consigned to oblivion, their triumphs and tragedies turn to sand, washed away by the waves of time. Lois Burnham would have likely had a metronome existence had she not met the man who became both her lover and destroyer. She was the eldest of six raised on Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, the daughter of a respected physician. The family were staunch believers in the Swedenborgian faith that counted among its followers Hellen Keller and Robert Frost. During the year the children attended the Quaker’s Friends School and in the summers, they vacationed in Vermont, where Dr. Burnham catered to his wealthy New York patients. The word Lois used in reference to her childhood was “idyllic.”
When one wakes up, it is with the expectation it will be an ordinary day, but sometimes an event occurs which changes the trajectory of life. While summering in Vermont, a local teen knocked on her door, trying to sell kerosene lamps that were slung across his shoulder on a pole. She recognized Bill Wilson as her brother Rogers’ friend, but was not interested in either boy or product. Wilson, who had a chip on his shoulder, felt the rich, city girl looked at him with condescension. Later on, when he saw her sailing on Emerald Lake, he decided it was payback time. He refurbished his grandfather’s old rowboat and fastened it with a makeshift sail made from a bedsheet. A gust of wind capsized his craft, and Bill was flung into the lake, wrapped in the sheet, a watery mummy. Lois rescued him—the beginning of a life-long pattern.
Although the Burnhams would have preferred a more suitable match for their college educated daughter—such as a male descendent of Abraham Lincoln who lived next door—they accepted the couple’s engagement. Lois proudly wore her twenty-five dollar small, amethyst ring. They wanted to marry when Bill was financially stable; however, with his imminent departure for Europe to serve in World War I, they wed in the Swedenborg Church, followed by a reception in Clinton Street. After his departure, Lois was devastated when she miscarried. She asked her superiors at her job in the YMCA to ship her overseas in the hope of being stationed near her husband and to be part of the war effort. She was turned down on the basis of her faith that they did not consider Christian.
In Brooklyn, Lois grappled with the pain of losing her baby and missing her husband; in England, Bill grappled with his own demons. To dull his insecurities and social inadequacy, he turned to the bottle. It was an instant love affair; Wilson claimed he had found “the elixir of life.” Because of his addictive personality, no matter how much alcohol he consumed, it never slayed his thirst.
While thousands of soldiers returned shell-shocked from the horror of trench-warfare, Bill returned with the burden of alcoholism. Lois, unfamiliar with disease, did not understand the depth of his illness, and what a devastating toll it would take.
Through her friend’s husband, Bill obtained a job on Wall Street. However, he found it soul-sucking, and felt that contributed to his ever escalating inebriation. To add to the mix of misery, Lois suffered another miscarriage that entailed a hysterectomy. Her husband arrived at the hospital, so lost in his own grief he could not help with hers. The Wilsons turned to adoption, but because of Bill’s alcoholism, every agency turned them down. No one would have cast aspersions had Lois walked away; the message in the bottle was clear. However, she could have given