Annie, Maggie and Helen

Anne Sullivan with Helen Keller

In 1876 Annie Sullivan was just 10 years old and ended up in an institute called the Tewkesbury Alms House in Massachusetts. He mother died when she was 8 and her father abandoned her and her siblings. She developed a violent temper and no one could control her, besides suffering from trachoma, an eye ailment. At the institute she met another girl named Maggie, who was a Christian and tried to befriend Annie and be nice to her. Maggie had also been abandoned but she reached out to Annie as no one else has. She suggested to her to enrol in the Perkins School of the Blind, where after a few operations, her sight improved a little. She even graduated when she was 20, and dedicated her life to help other blind children. She heard of a 7-year-old girl Helen Keller, who was deaf and mute, and decided to go to Tuscumbia in Alabama, to be her mentor. Thanks to Annie, Helen was able to graduate from the University, and became a well-known author, political activist and lecturer. ‘The Miracle Worker’, a highly emotional 1962 movie tells their story, which also became a Broadway show.