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##### October 21, 1936 OBITUARY ## 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 His love." 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 there. 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 enough." 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.
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