Anne Sullivan Biography

Johanna ‘Anne’ Mansfield Sullivan Macy, better known as Anne Sullivan, was a well known Irish-American teacher and a mentor to Helen Keller. She went through a tough time as a child because her mother was suffering from frail health and her father was an alcoholic. After the death of her mother and abandonment by her father at the age of 8, she and her brother, Jammie, were sent to state almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. There her brother passed away and then she moved on to the Perkins School for the Blind, Boston. She passed out of there as a valedictorian of her class. After that she moved to Tuscumbia, Alabama to Keller family to tutor their deaf, blind and mute daughter Helen Keller and from there onwards she was with her for the next 39 years of her life, tutoring her, accompanying her to the university, helping her to understand her lectures, tutorials, etc. Sullivan and Helen started working for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) as advocates, counselors and fundraisers. She fell in love with John Albert Macy, a Harvard instructor and they both got married when she was only 39 but the marriage never worked out and they got separated. She died in comma at the age of 70, while holding hands with her companion of life Helen Keller.