October 21, 1936OBITUARY
Mrs. Macy Is Dead; Aided Miss Keller
BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mrs. Anne Mansfield Sullivan Macy, who for nearly fifty years was the kindly, patient
and brilliant teacher of Miss Helen Keller, noted blind and deaf woman, died yesterday at
their home, 71-11 Seminole Avenue, Forest Hills, Queens. She had been suffering from
a heart ailment, which became acute early this Summer. Mrs. Macy was 70 years old.
Mrs. Macy taught Miss Keller to read, speak and know the world about her by use of her
fingertips. Their lifelong devotion to each other was internationally famous and one was
seldom seen or heard of without the other. Blindness, which had shadowed the child
Anne Sullivan's life and which she had conquered before she met Miss Keller, had
returned to darken her last days, and Miss Keller had to become the teacher and Mrs.
Macy the pupil.
Miss Keller yesterday paid this 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."
Miss Polly Thompson, Miss Keller's secretary, said yesterday that Miss Keller was
"bearing up magnificently" under her loss. During the last week Miss Keller was almost
constantly at Mrs. Macy's side. Mrs. Macy was in a coma from Thursday until she died.
On Wednesday she said: "Oh, Helen and Polly, my children, I pray God will unite us in
Mrs. Macy, so long the link to light for Miss Keller, lost the sight of her own right eye in
1929, due partly to a cataract, for which an operation was performed. In May, 1935, a
cataract operation was done on her left eye, but thereafter she was able to distinguish only
light and color with it. She could no longer read or guide her beloved Miss Keller, who,
despite her own handicaps, devoted herself to her friend.
Pupil Guides Teacher in Braille
As early as 1933 Miss Keller had commenced to teach Mrs. Macy to read Braille. But
the Braille system had changed since Mrs. Macy taught it to Miss Keller and the teacher
found it difficult.
When it became known that year that Miss Keller, who had been led out of the black
silence in which she had existed since childhood by the ingenuity, perseverance and
patience of her teacher, was in turn preparing her teacher to "see" with her fingers, THE
NEW YORK TIMES, in an editorial, said:
"The 'blind leading the blind' will henceforth have a new meaning wherever the story of
Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller is known. They who have been exiled from the light
have been able to demonstrate the power of the mind to overcome limitation."
Mrs. Macy was 21 years old when she met Helen Keller. Born in Feeding Hills, near
Springfield, Mass., on April 14, 1866, the daughter of Irish immigrants, John and Mary
Mansfield Sullivan, Mrs. Macy suffered the loss of her mother when a young child. For a
year or two she was supported by poor relatives, but at the age of 10 she was sent to the
State Infirmary, Tewksbury, Mass.
She was already partially blind and at the infirmary two eye operations were performed,
but her sight did not improve. She was led to believe that Frank B. Sanborn, chairman of
the State Board of Charities, who sometimes visited the infirmary, might be able to aid
her. She pleaded with him and he arranged for her entry into the Perkins Institution for
the Blind in Boston, where lived Laura Bridgman, blind and deaf, who had been trained
Underwent Two Eye Operations
Mrs. Macy entered the Perkins Institution in 1880, made there a brilliant scholastic record
and learned to study with her fingers, and later, after two operations had restored her
sight, to use her eyes. She learned the manual, or finger, alphabet, so as to be able to talk
to Laura Bridgman. In 1886 she was graduated as valedictorian of her class.
Not long after her graduation Helen Keller's father wrote to the institution asking for help
for her. Miss Sullivan was chosen to be her teacher and, after familiarizing herself with
the details of her new work, went to Helen's home in Tuscumbia, Ala.
The two who were to mean so much to each other until Mrs. Macy's death yesterday met
first on March 3, 1887, three months before Helen was 7 years old. Miss Keller said later
that it was "the most important day I remember in all my life."
Working carefully, so as to bring Helen under some sort of discipline without breaking
her spirit, Mrs. Macy began spelling words into her hand. With no understanding of what
they meant, Helen began repeating them.
The teacher persisted, spelling the word doll when she gave her a doll, bread when she
gave her bread, candy when she gave her candy. In less than a month Helen realized that
everything had a name and that she had a way, the finger alphabet, of calling the names.
Teaching Along New Paths
One day Mrs. Macy tried to teach Helen the difference between a cup and the water in the
cup. She took her to a pump, pumped water over one hand and spelled water into the
other hand. Helen at last understood. She pointed to Miss Sullivan, who spelled teacher,
and "teacher" she was to the close.
Mrs. Macy educated Helen, using always the finger spelling, but treating her like any
other child. After preliminary lessons in speaking, Helen learned from Mrs. Macy to
converse and even speak from a platform.
Teacher and pupil remained for a time at the Perkins Institution. Then, in 1894, Helen
was enrolled in the Wright-Humason Oral School for the Deaf in New York. Later Miss
Sullivan took her to a school in Cambridge to prepare her for Radcliffe College and
finally Helen passed triumphantly her entrance examinations, entered Radcliffe and in
1904 was graduated cum laude.
Throughout the college course Mrs. Macy was with Helen, spelling into her hands the
words of the textbooks and the books of required reading. Miss Keller's career thereafter
brought her more and more into the public eye. She became famous as an author, she
raised huge sums for the blind, she traveled, she was everywhere acclaimed, and Mrs.
Macy went everywhere with her.
"My own life," Mrs. Macy said once, "is so interwoven with my Helen's life that I can't
separate myself from her."
Honored by Foreign Lands
When Mrs. Macy's sixty-seventh birthday was celebrated Miss Keller proposed a toast:
"Here's to my teacher, whose birthday was the Easter morning of my life."
In 1931 Mrs. Macy received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from
Temple University and the Order of St. Sava from the King of Yugoslavia.
In 1932 she became an honorary fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland. Mrs.
Macy stayed in seclusion for several months in 1933 in Scotland while Miss Keller
nursed her. Mrs. Macy's blindness grew more pronounced and on her return from
Scotland she said:
"Helen is and always has been thoroughly well behaved in her blindness as well as her
deafness, but I'm making a futile fight of it, like a bucking bronco. It's not the big things
in life that one misses through loss of sight, but such little things as being able to read.
And I have no patience, like Helen, for the Braille system, because I can't read fast
Early this month the Roosevelt Memorial Association announced that Roosevelt medals
"for a cooperative achievement of heroic character and far-reaching significance" would
be presented to Miss Keller and Mrs. Macy. In a telegram of sympathy to Miss Keller
yesterday Hermann Hagedorn, executive director of the association, said that presentation
to Miss Keller would be postponed from Oct. 27 to next year.
Mrs. Macy was married to John Albert Macy, author and critic, in 1905. He died in
1932. There are no immediate survivors.
A funeral service will be conducted at 2 P. M. tomorrow at the Park Avenue Presbyterian
Church, 1,010 Park Avenue, by the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick and the Rev.
Edmund M. Wylie, the pastor.
After the service, cremation will take place, in accord with Mrs. Macy's wish, at the Fresh
Pond Crematory, Queens.
The honorary pallbearers will be M. C. Migel, president of the American Foundation for
the Blind, which Miss Keller and Mrs. Macy greatly aided; Robert Irwin, executive
director of the foundation; Harvey D. Gibson, Russell Doubleday, Dr. Conrad Berens, Dr.
Philip S. Smith, Dr. William F. Saybolt, Dr. John H. Finley, Louis Bamberger, the Rev.
Dr. Edward E. Allen, director emeritus of the Perkins Institution; Dr. William Allan
Neilson, president of Smith College, and William Ziegler Jr.