Autographs
Helen Keller American Foundation for the Blind For Funds
HELEN KELLER (1880 - 1968). American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the First Deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the near complete lack of language as she learned to communicate, is in the dramatic play and film “The Miracle Worker.”
March 31, 1952-Dated, Typed Letter Signed, “Helen Keller” in pencil upon her quality watermarked personal light blue stationery, New York, Choice Extremely Fine. Her 1 page, measuring 11” x 8.5”. This letter is addressed to “Mr. Luhrs” and contains her personal appeal for funds for the “American Foundation for the Blind.” This Letter reads, in part:

“I am indeed happy to inform you that my deaf-blind fellows are receiving constructive help for the first time in the history of America. This work, now nearly nation-wide in scope, is being carried forward as one of the many services of the American Foundation for the Blind with which I have been allied for twenty-nine years... Try to imagine, if you can, the anguish and horror you would experience bowed down by the twofold weight of blindness and deafness... Still throbbing with natural emotions and desires, you would feel through a sense of touch the existence of a living world, and desperately but vainly would you seek an escape into its healing light. All your pleasures would vanish in a dreadful monotony of silent days...

The blind who are taught can live happily in a world of sounds, and the deaf use their eyes instead of ears, but the deaf-blind have no substitute for sight and hearing. The keenest touch cannot break their immobility. More than any other physically fettered group, they need right teaching and constructive procedures to reclaim them to normal society...”

Helen Keller’s signature is carefully written in pencil as usual at the bottom of the page, it measuring over 2” long. A true heartfelt letter with terrific content. This letter is offered together with the original transmittal envelope measuring 5.75” x 4.5” as well as a 5.5” x 4.25”, 4 page Printed Brochure for Keller’s Foundation, bearing a portrait of her upon its cover. This lot also includes the self-addressed stamped envelope, measuring 5.5” x 4.5”, for the donation to be sent, addressed to the “AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR OVERSEAS BLIND Inc.” (4 items).