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JULY 1922

INTERVIEW WITH HELEN KELLER
(Back to July 1922)

Get into a conversation with a long time Queens resident and you're likely to discover a subscriber of the Long Island Star- Journal, a daily paper that informed the community about local and world news until it folded in 1968. A banner across the Star Journal masthead reminded readers that the newspaper's name came from the merger of the Long Island Daily Star (1876) and the North Shore Daily Journal - The Flushing Journal (1841).

Wednesday July 5, 1922, p.12.

Helen Keller Says Her Teacher is One of 12 Greatest Women-Young Forest Hills Woman, Blind and Deaf, Names Mrs. A.J. Macy-Gives Opinions on World and Industrial Topics for Star Readers.

(By W.H. Graff)

That her teacher, Mrs. A.J. Macy, who first opened to her the beauties of a world she can see only mentally, should be included in the list of the twelve greatest women in the United States, is the firm belief of Helen Keller, Queens’ most famous woman, who has been mentioned frequently of late as a candidate for a place in the race of America’s greatest women.

Of the many subjects discussed in the course of an interview with a representative of the Daily Star, this was one that seemed to interest Miss Keller most when she was seen the other day at her home, 93 Seminole avenue, Forest Hills. On Tuesday of last week, Miss Keller celebrated her forty-second birthday. The years have dealt kindly with her, and it may be said truthfully that she looks at least ten years younger.

Picture to yourself a brown-haired, tall and strongly-built young woman with a fine head set on her shoulders just right, with a mouth that is large and finely shaped, large, luminous eyes that light up and move expressively when she talks and a countenance that expresses a high degree of intelligence, and you have a fairly accurate description of Helen Keller as she is today.

When the reporter called at the beautiful Forest Hills home where Miss Keller lives with Mrs. Macy, the woman who has been her inseparable companion since Miss Keller was seven years old, he was led by Mrs. Macy into the cheerful living room and told that Miss Keller would be in directly. A massive Great Dane came bounding into the room to extend hospitable greeting.

Patty, aged six, one of Miss Keller’s nieces, who recently came on a visit from the South, volunteered the information that the dog’s name is "Sieglinde" and is one of Miss Keller’s special pets. Sieglinde stretched herself out on a rug near the door leading into the hall. As Miss Keller approached, led by Mrs. Macy, the animal arose quickly and extended a paw toward her blind mistress, so that she would not stumble. The intelligent animal does that invariably, Mrs. Macy said.

Interview By Proxy

A handshake and a few words of greeting to the caller, and then Miss Keller sat down on a settee, Mrs. Macy and little Patty seating themselves on either side of her. The reporter took a chair opposite and Sieglinde took a position between, casting comprehending glances from one side to another. All was ready for the interview to begin. As a rule, Mrs. Macy uses the single-hand manual alphabet employed by the deaf-spelling the words into the palm of Miss Keller’s hand. Frequently, too, Miss Keller reads her teacher’s lips. With one or two fingers, the blind girl senses the spoken word by the movement of the lips and the expression of the face.

Using her sense of touch, Miss Keller can also catch the vibrations of the throat, particularly those of a singer. The late Enrico Caruso on several occasions sang especially for Miss Keller. Mrs. Macy and a few friends mostly use the finger-spelling method in speaking to Miss Keller, for this is more convenient and more rapid than lip-reading.

The blind young woman’s voice is low and pleasant to listen to. Her speech lacks variety and modulation, however, and when she speaks with a fair degree of loudness, it hovers about two or three middle tones. This is accounted for by the fact that, being deaf, she cannot hear herself speak. Some of her notes are musical and charming. At times her voice runs into pretty slurs from one tone to another. This is like the effect of the slow dwelling on long words, not quite well managed, that one notices in a child who is telling a solemn story.

Miss Keller’s Sense of Humor

The trait most characteristic, perhaps, of Miss Keller (and also Mrs. Macy) is humor. Skill in the use of words and her habit of playing with them make her ready with epigrams. In April, Miss Keller and her teacher concluded a successful vaudeville tour of eight months which carried them throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Miss Keller gave demonstrations on the stage of her lip-reading ability.

Miss Keller told the reporter she had noted that people are concerned with dancing and laughter and she felt that people went to vaudeville theatres to forget their problems and their anxieties. After the vaudeville tour, and before returning to Forest Hills, Miss Keller and her teacher visited the married sister of the former in Alabama.

"I was rusticating in the South," said Miss Keller, "visiting my relatives. I spent much time walking, reading, and playing with the children-my nieces."

And then, naively, she added: "I exerted myself to the utmost doing nothing. I have a tremendous capacity for doing nothing.

Asked how she enjoyed her visit with her niece to the Bronx Park zoo on her birthday last week, Miss Keller’s face lighted up with pleasure.

"It was so interesting and so enjoyable,’ she said. "Although I could not see or hear the animals, it was delightful to get the impressions of joy and wonder from the lips of the young nieces who accompanied me."

Little Patty, at this point, proud of the fact that she could be of some help in the interview, permitted Aunt Helen to read her lips. Miss Keller repeated, clearly and distinctly, several sentences spoken by the child. The niece referred to several stories her aunt had told. One was about a blind dog.

Miss Keller said that because she had been so heavily engaged during her tour she was not so well posted on happenings in the world today as she might wish to be.

How Hague Looks to Her

When she was asked about the conference at The Hague,¹ Miss Keller said:

"If it succeeds as well as the others, I don’t think anything will come of it. The trouble with these conferences is that they are trying to maintain an order of things that is dying, and each conference is but another step in the funeral march."

"Why do you think it is a dying order?" Miss Keller was asked. Mrs. Macy spelled the question into her hand. Miss Keller reflected a few moments, and then answered:

"Look how many of our institutions were shaken by the great war, and look how the positions of the nations changed. Think of the terrible conditions in Europe now!"

"Have you heard anything about the railway strike?"²

"Yes, but the railway men will call off their strike if they find out that they will benefit the miners in their efforts to win. Many workers are blind and stupid past belief, and they are as selfish as their capitalistic masters. If they were not stupid and blind, they would work together for a saner and just society."

Radio Staggers Her

About radio, Miss Keller had this to say:

"It staggers my imagination, the wonders that are coming so thick and fast in science. I wish they would come as thick and fast in human civilization."

Mrs. Macy explained that Miss Keller is always interested in social problems of the world. Her mind goes that way and it is due to her intense desire for a better world. In answer to another question, Miss Keller said she was not trying to reform the world.

"I am only holding up the danger signal."

"It never occurs to the reformer that he is giving the wrong signal,’ it was suggested to Miss Keller.

"We all know the danger signal," she answered.

"What is it? What is coming?"

"The collapse of whatever is sane and orderly in the world," said the young woman, "unless a new system is devised for carrying on the business, education, and industry of the world."

"And, of course, you know what it is?"

"We only try to guess and suggest," responded Miss Keller.

Getting back to the subject of radio, Miss Keller was asked if she believed radio will ever be perfected so that the deaf may be benefited or helped to hear. She said there is no reason why it should not be.

Miss Keller said that when she visited her friend, Thomas Edison, some time ago, her promised to make an effort to devise some method whereby the blind could read ordinary print. Then the war came, and he has never taken the matter up, as far as she knows. Miss Keller said she had taken a deep interest in accounts of a blind young man in Lansing, Mich., who has taken the highest honors in radio.

"He could hear, of course, for he couldn’t study with profit if he couldn’t hear. He set up his own wireless with the help of a seeing friend, and he catches messages that come from ships along the coast. It is great!"

About Great Women

Regarding the twelve greatest women in the United States, Miss Keller declared that in her opinion there are not many individual women in this country who stand out.

"In the many lists that have been suggested," said Miss Keller, "I was surprised to note that none included the name of my wonderful teacher, Mrs. Macy. She deserves that honor as do few of those mentioned."

Miss Keller considers Edith Wharton the only constructive writer among women, and among European women she admires Kate O’Hare,³ because she was willing to go to prison for her opinions.

To the genius, quick sympathy and loving tact of her teacher, who was Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan when she first came into her life at Tuscumbia, a little town in northern Alabama, Miss Keller attributes her greatest happiness. In her book, "The Story of My Life," Helen Keller says:

"My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence I can never tell. I feel that her being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best in me belongs to her-there is not a talent, or an inspiration, or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch."

Miss Keller was not born deaf, dumb, and blind. During the first nineteen months of her life she had caught glimpses of broad green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers, which the darkness that followed a severe illness could not wholly block out. She was just beginning to talk as a baby usually does when the illness came and closed her eyes and ears and plunged her into the unconsciousness of the new-born babe. They called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain.⁴

The education of Miss Keller and the overcoming of the tremendous handicaps in her life have made her one of the most talked-on individuals in the world. Mark Twain has said that the two most interesting characters of the 19^th century were Napoleon and Helen Keller.

1. This may have been a reference to the Conference for a New Peace at The Hague, organized by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. The Conference denounced the Versailles Treaty of 1919 that followed World War I as creating the conditions for another war, and called for a new peace agreement.
2. The LIRR was on strike in July 1922 as part of a national strike that followed a miners’ strike.
3. Socialist Kate O’Brien spoke out against the U.S.’s entry into World War 1 and was imprisoned under the Federal Espionage Act from 1917 until her sentence was commuted in 1920. In 1922 she organized the Children’s Crusade, a march on Washington by the children of war protestors who were still in prison.
4. It was probably scarlet fever or meningitis.

Compiled by Clare Doyle, Librarian, Greater Astoria Historical Society.