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Ms. DOROTHY HERRMANN (Author, "Helen Keller: A Life"): Helen Keller
was the world-famous deaf-blind writer and essayist, and she was a
woman that I always found very fascinating. Here was a woman who
spent almost her entire life, from the time she was 19 months old, in
darkness and in silence, and yet she accomplished many, many
a--amazing things. She wrote many books, among them the famous, "The
Story of My Life," which was her autobiography. And she graduated
from Radcliffe College. She was the first deaf-blind person ever to
graduate from college. And she was also an advocate for the blind and
the deaf-blind. Yet interestingly, as famous as Helen Keller was, I
discovered as I was beginning my research that many people are only
familiar with the early part of her life, and this was the part that
William Gibson portrayed so compellingly in "The Miracle Worker." And
also, ironically, because Helen Keller was so revered in her lifetime,
that I found that many people had ceased to regard her as a real
person, and that's why I wrote my book, to find the real woman behind
the myth.

LAMB: When did she live?

Ms. HERRMANN: Helen Keller was born in 1880 and she lived until
1968. And she lived an incredible 88 years having this condition.

LAMB: And you say she was deaf and blind. Could she speak?

Ms. HERRMANN: At first, no. She suffered at the age of 19 months a
disease that at that time was known or--as brain fever. That's what
the doctors of the period diagnosed it as being. To this day we don't
know what that disease was, whether it was scarlet fever, which was
very prevalent at the time, or whether it was spinal be--meningitis or
whether it was rubella. But whatever this disease was, it completely
wiped out her hearing and her sight. And as a result, she could not
speak, although there was certainly nothing wrong with her vocal
cords.

LAMB: Now if you go out here to the National Cathedral right here in
Washington, you can find the ashes of three people, if I understand
you correctly in your book: Helen Keller, Polly Thompson and Annie
Sullivan. Why are they all three buried there?

Ms. HERRMANN: They had--first of all, for them it was an honor
during their lifetime for them to be--to consider being buried there
because of their--of their fame. During her lifetime, I would say
that Helen Keller and Eleanor Roosevelt were the two most famous women
of their generation.

LAMB: What about Polly Thompson? Who was she and who was Annie
Sullivan?

Ms. HERRMANN: Annie Sullivan, of course, was Helen Keller's teacher.
She was a--a very, very young woman when she went to Tuscumbia,
Alabama, where Helen was born. It's in a rural part of Alabama.
Annie Sullivan came from a background that was really as horrendous as
Helen Keller. Her parents were illiterate Irish immigrants who came
to Massachusetts after the great famine and her mother died of
tuberculosis at a very young age. Her brothers and sisters also died
at young ages, and then her father abandoned the family, and Annie and
her young brother, Jimmy, were placed in an almshouse in Massachusetts
where Jimmy subsequently died.

Annie was in a unique position to understand Helen because she was
half blind herself, and she suffered from a viral disease of the eye
that, until 1937 with the advent of sulfur drugs, was responsible for
much of the blindness in the world.

LAMB: Here's a picture in your book in the later years of Helen
Keller on the left and Polly Thompson on the right. Now who--how did
Polly Thompson figure in this?

Ms. HERRMANN: Polly Thompson was Helen's second companion after the
death of Annie Sullivan in 1936, and she was very loyal to Helen. She
accompanied her on many of her travels because Helen, in her later
years, was a fund-raiser for the American Foundation for the Blind,
and she traveled worldwide to raise public awareness of the needs of
the blind. She was, however, not the brilliant teacher and companion
that Annie Sullivan was to--to Helen Keller. She did not have Annie
Sullivan's flair for making the world stimulating, this--this outside
world that Helen Keller never saw or heard so interesting to her. But
she was--she was certainly--in terms of just being loyal to her and
devoted, she was certainly an excellent companion to her.

LAMB: How many books have been written about Helen Keller?

Ms. HERRMANN: I would say perhaps a half a dozen, but most of them I
found, in the preparation for my own book, either sentimentalized her
life terribly so that we did not re--that we cease to regard her as a
real human being, or else they missed the drama of Helen Keller's
life. Because Helen Keller's later life was, in my mind, more
dramatic than the early part that most people are familiar with
through "The Miracle Worker." Here was a woman who became world famous
shortly after the--the miracle mainly because of Alexander Graham
Bell, who was very interested in her. Bell invented the telephone
partially as a hearing aid. He had a--a deaf mother and a deaf wife,
and he wanted to use what had happened in Tuscumbia, the so-called
miracle at the well, of--of Helen understanding language, to promote
awareness of the deaf and his theories of--of teaching them.

The other person who certainly promoted Helen Keller was a director of
the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, which,
by the way, is the first school for the blind in the United States.
And he pronounced Helen to be a prodigy, so when people heard about
what had happened at Tuscumbia and then, with the influence of these
two important men, especially Alexander Graham Bell, Helen was--was
world famous.

But then, shortly after that, she sent Anagnos, as a matter of fact, a
little birthday gift, which was supposedly an original story that she
had written, and he proclaimed it--and here was a man who was, I must
say, given to exaggeration...

LAMB: Let me just stop you to ask you who Anagnos was.

Ms. HERRMANN: He was the director of the Perkins Institution for the
Blind.

LAMB: Based in...

Ms. HERRMANN: In Watertown, Massachusetts. And he pronounced this
story that was his birthday gift as without parallel in the history of
American literature. Unfortunately for Helen Keller, that story was a
plagiarism. It was plagiarized from one of Margaret Canby's
ch--ch--children's stories, and Margaret Canby was a famous children's
book author of the period. A--and after that, I mean, people then
began to suspect Helen Keller of being a f--a fraud.

LAMB: And you're talking about--and it--and it c--it pops up more
than once in the book, the title of--that she wrote was c--what she
wrote was called "The Frost King"?

Ms. HERRMANN: "The Frost King," yes. And...

LAMB: Helen Keller wrote "The Frost King" in what year?

Ms. HERRMANN: In what year? That I'm not sure. I would say
probably around 1896.

LAMB: And how long was it before that people thought it was a fraud,
that she had plagiarized?

Ms. HERRMANN: Almost immediately. And she, therefore, became
suspect in many people's eyes. Of course, as a b--as a biographer,
this was one of the--my great challenges, is just in discussing her
relationship with Annie Sullivan, and that was namely who was doing
what in this relationship. Was Helen Keller really a genius
and--through which--and--and Annie was her instrument for expressing
that genius? Or was Annie Sullivan the genius and Helen Keller her
mindless puppet? And certainly after the--"The Frost King" incident,
there were many people who s--accused her of being Anne Sullivan's
puppet and that she was mindless.

LAMB: Anne Sullivan--i--if--if Helen Keller lived to--to 1968, Anne
Sullivan lived to what year?

Ms. HERRMANN: Till '36--1936.

LAMB: And then Polly Thompson died what year?

Ms. HERRMANN: She died in the late--in the late '50s.

LAMB: You--you got interested in all this how, in the first place?

Ms. HERRMANN: I always found her to be intriguing, as I said before.

LAMB: But where, though--where were you?

Ms. HERRMANN: Where...

LAMB: You started--first time you can remember saying, `I want to do
a biography on Helen Keller,' where did you live and what were you
doing?

Ms. HERRMANN: I was living, as I am now, in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania. I had just finished a biography of Anne Morrow
Lindbergh, who lived in nearby Hopewell, New Jersey, and Mrs.
Lindbergh's life was certainly very dramatic. And after I'd finished
that biography I wanted to do a biography of another person who--of
that generation, and another woman--another woman who was considered
heroic, an inspirational figure of the '40s and '50s, and naturally
Helen Keller came to mind.

LAMB: Why did you want to do another woman?

Ms. HERRMANN: I think that having done a--a--a male subject--my
first biography was about S.J. Perelman, and I found that after doing
his biography that I w--I wanted to do a female subject and found
in--in doing Mrs. Lindbergh's work that--that I felt more at home,
that I could understand the psychology better of a woman than I could
of a man. Of course, it was S.J. P--Perelman's very complicated
psychology that I was dealing with, and I don't know if I can--I can
really compare any of my subjects because they've all been so--so
different. But I--I do look for somebody who does have a dramatic
life, and Helen Keller certainly--certainly had one.

LAMB: What year did you start the Helen Keller research?

Ms. HERRMANN: About four years ago, and when I first began it, I
wondered whether I really could attempt such a work as a hearing,
sighted person, but fortunately for me, I was introduced by the staff
at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown to some amazing
deaf-blind people, and I also lived for a week a--a--at Perkins where
I met many deaf-blind people, and then I met Robert Smithus of the
Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults in Sands
Point, New York. And Mr. Smithus had lost his sight and hearing at a
later age than Helen Keller, but I found that after about three
minutes with him--and he had known her, by the way, so he had some
very interesting anecdotes to tell about her--I found that after about
three minutes with him, I completely f--forgot that he was a
deaf-blind person.

LAMB: Now how did he hear you speak?

Ms. HERRMANN: Through an interpreter who knew the manual finger
language, and then because he was trained under a different method
than Helen Keller, the Tadoma method of speech, which has since gone
out of--of favor among certain teachers of the deaf-blind and the
deaf-blind themselves, he was able to answer me directly in a very
comprehensible speaking voice.

LAMB: How many--and I remember you--a figure in the book, but I don't
know how--f--for what period--how many deaf-blind people are there in
either the United States or in the world? You had a figure of 50 in
the book from some period of time. Is that--we've ever known th--50
people have--in this country who've been deaf and blind?

Ms. HERRMANN: It is estimated that 50 people in the 20th century
have completely lost their sight and hearing at a very young age.
This doesn't mean that there aren't deaf-blind people, but they're
people who may be deaf or hard of hearing and then gradually lose
their sight, but not this complete loss. It's an--it's an extremely
rare disorder and, fortunately, we have eradicated those diseases. I
mean, we don't--no longer--people do not get scarlet fever, so that
the--most of these diseases ha--that cause this type of devastating
handicap have been eliminated.

LAMB: Now w--how did you get interested in being a writer?

Ms. HERRMANN: I came from an artistic family. My father was Bernard
Herrmann, who is the film composer and did the music for "Citizen
Kane" and many Hitchcock films, among them "Vertigo" and "Psycho." My
mother is a mystery and suspense writer--her name is Lucille
Fletcher--who wrote "Sorry, Wrong Number," and my stepfather was a
novelist and he wrote the--among other works, "The Year the Yankees
Lost the Penant," which was made into "Damn Yankees." So let's say I
inherited the fam--I just wanted to grow up being a writer because I
was around writers. And I also had the false impression, since they
didn't go to jobs, that this was an easy life, that you could just get
up when you wanted to and work for a couple of hours and that would be
it. Of course, later I was to learn that the muse is a really tough
dollar.

LAMB: Where did you go to college?

Ms. HERRMANN: I went to Middlebury College in Vermont and s--studied
English there.

LAMB: And to prepare for this, besides going to the Perkins School,
did you do other things? Did you ever spend a day where you couldn't
hear or see? Did you try to do that?

Ms. HERRMANN: I did. At the beginning I put on a blindfold and put
in earplugs and did all of that, and tried to figure out how far or
how easily I could get around my house. And I found that it was quite
a feat to get from the downstairs to the living room upstairs.
I--at--at the beginning I thought about perhaps really going into a
t--a flotation tank or really sensorially depriving myself, but I was
warned against it by people because they pointed out to me--and this
w--these were people who had worked with the deaf-blind--and--that for
Helen Keller, this was a totally natural condition, and that one could
never duplicate it.

And it was true, that for her this was a really valid alternate
reality, and that was one of the surprises to me as I worked on the
book, that I thought that she lived in this silent black pit, and that
was far from the case. She had a very interesting world that she
lived in and it was filled with vibrations, with smells, with taste
and, of course, when she--she--after Annie Sullivan broke through to
her, in the next few years, she learned Braille. Before Braille was
standardized, she learned many other types of raised print. So she
had a great deal of information at her disposal.

LAMB: How did she become a socialist and how important was that to
the way she was viewed in this country?

Ms. HERRMANN: To--to talk about Helen Keller and socialism is
complicated and I--I'd like to backtrack a little bit and talk about
Anne Sullivan's husband, John Albert Macy. And this may come as a
shock to many people who have seen "The Miracle Worker," but Annie
Sullivan did get married. And she married a man by the name of John
Macy, who was an instructor of English at Harvard, who was brilliant,
handsome. He helped Helen edit her 1903 autobiography, "The Story of
My Life." He was much older than An--I mean, actually he was much
younger than Annie Sullivan, and about only a couple of years older
than Helen. And they married when Annie Sullivan was about 40 years
old, and it had to be one of the strangest marriages on record,
because...

LAMB: Which one in this picture is John Macy?

Ms. HERRMANN: He is the gentleman who is the second from the right.

LAMB: So he's in the middle.

Ms. HERRMANN: He's in the middle, yes.

LAMB: Who's standing?

Ms. HERRMANN: Who's standing? That is Anne Sullivan Macy, and then
the woman who is seated is Helen Keller. And the gentleman on--on my
right is John Hitz, who was Alexander Graham Bell's secretary. And,
of course, they loved dogs, Helen and Annie did, and so that's one of
their--their dogs in the middle.

LAMB: So the relationship between John Macy and Annie Sullivan
started where?

Ms. HERRMANN: It started at Radcliffe College. Annie Sullivan was
having a--additional problems with her eyesight, and to get Helen
through college was quite an ordeal because she had to literally spell
everything into her hand, and it was very--it was a very difficult
time for both women, and John Albert Macy, as I said before, stepped
in. He learned the manual finger language so as to be able to
communicate with Helen, and he did help her with her--with her
autobiography.

Then he and Annie Sullivan fell in love and they were married a few
years later. She was 40, he was about 28 years old, and it was said
that he married, in essence, really, two women. For years there's
been speculation about which woman he was really in love with.

LAMB: What's this picture right here?

Ms. HERRMANN: This picture is of Ann--of Helen Keller and Annie
Sullivan.

LAMB: Annie Sullivan's looking out at us?

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes, and Helen is resting her head on her chest. And
I think Helen, by that time, was about 18 and Annie Sullivan was 32.

LAMB: What was their relationship all through the years they were
together? Did they live together?

Ms. HERRMANN: Oh, yes, they--they were never parted. Only death
parted them. Their relationship was very complex. It was a very
strengthening relationship, I felt, but it was also a suffocating
relationship. I think that mo--that both women, even though their
strange bond meant that they couldn't--could not really l--lead
independent lives, because it was Annie Sullivan's devotion to Helen
that, in the end, wrecked her marriage to John Macy. But overall,
both women would have been diminished without this intense
relationship. I mean, there's never been another relationship like
the relationship of these two women in history or literature. And
Mark Twain, their--their good friend, didn't even consider them two
separate beings. He said, `It takes the two of you to make a perfect
whole.'

But surely th--people--people have asked me what would have happened
to Helen Keller without Annie Sullivan, and my own feeling is, is that
she would have been institutionalized or she would have been kept in
some lonely shuttered backroom in Alabama, and then Annie Sullivan
would not have enjoyed the world fame that she did as Helen Keller's
companion and teacher.

LAMB: This is the picture on the back of the book. Do you know where
this was taken and what their ages were then?

Ms. HERRMANN: I don't know where this intriguing photograph was
taken. It's in the Library of Congress' collection, the Bell
collection, and when I saw it, it just took my breath away because you
really--the--the photographer really captures the essence of these two
women, of Annie Sullivan bringing this woman out of the shadows, which
is what she--she did and what she dedicated her life to doing.

LAMB: Socialism, John Macy.

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes, let's get back to him. John Macy was a--a--a
socialist, a--quite a violent socialist, and he wrote a book called
"Socialism in America." He was a f--ranted and raved against the
capitalists of the time, and I think that it is debatable whether
Helen Keller would have become such a rabid socialist had she not met
John Macy. He was a tremendous influence on her and--but once she was
exposed to socialism, it was something that she believed in her entire
life. She eventually did tone down her speeches and also her writings
about socialism because, among other things, she was a very practical
woman. She had to earn a living, and there was a time when, for--for
her to have been such a--an outspoken advocate of socialism, would
have gotten her into a great deal of trouble, and she was smart enough
to know that.

LAMB: Where, besides Tuscumbia, Alabama, did Helen Keller live in her
life?

Ms. HERRMANN: She lived for many years in the Boston area. She
had--she and John Macy and Annie Sullivan shared a home in Wrentham,
Massachusetts, and then she lived in Connecticut. After Annie
Sullivan's death, she lived near the Westport area and had a large and
very comfortable house that she shared with Polly Thompson. But then
in 1946, there was a fire that devastated her home and many key papers
were lost. We're not exactly sure what those papers were. Even
people who were extremely close to Helen Keller have no idea of what
precisely was in that house, but it can be assumed that Anne
Sullivan's correspondence to her husband was destroyed in that fire,
as was Helen Keller's correspondence with a man named Peter Fagan, who
was the love of her life.

LAMB: Was the draft of the--the book, "Teacher," also burned in that?

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes.

LAMB: And "Teacher" was the name that she used for her teacher...

Ms. HERRMANN: A--An--Annie Sullivan.

LAMB: ...Annie Sullivan. And then I remember you writing that she
had--she took another seven years to write that book after...

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes, she did.

LAMB: To write it--write it from scratch again.

Ms. HERRMANN: She--she had to write it from--from scratch, and it
was very, very difficult for her to write that book. That was long
after Teacher's death, and she--for--for Helen, it was an incredibly
emotional experience. People who knew her well said that she was not
an emotional person, but when it was time for her to write "Teacher,"
and all during the writing of it, she developed all kinds of
psychosomatic ailments and she--she broke down and cried frequently.
That was the--the depth of her feeling that so persisted about this
woman who had--who had really raised her from the dead.

LAMB: What year did she have her eyes taken out and, I believe, false
teeth put in and--and wa--started wearing a wig?

Ms. HERRMANN: Well, the--the false teeth and the wig came at the--at
the end of her life when she was a very old woman. Her--the question
of her eyes--and this no other biographer has ever pointed out about
Helen Keller, and her family also went to great lengths to conceal
it--but she did have artificial eyes, and w--you can see, if you study
some early photographs of her or--most of her early photographs are
photographed in right profile.

LAMB: What about this cover shot? Do you know when that was taken,
if that was...

Ms. HERRMANN: That was taken about the time that she was in
Radcliffe, but I--I can't tell you the amount of work that I went to
to find a photograph that actual--and I wanted to put it on the
cover--that actually revealed her blindness. This was an exception
because many people, photographers included, took great pains to
conceal it for the early part of her life. So she was always
photographed in right profile. All those early photographs of her
that you will see in this book are all taken from right profile, and
there were very elaborate explanations about why she was always
photographed in right p--profile. Someone said that she had a large
blemish on the left side of her face that she wanted to conceal
and--so it wasn't until the early 1900s, when she had to appear on the
lecture stage--and again, here was a woman who was world famous, but
she needed to earn a living, she needed to go out there, be in front
of the public and tell her story, and at that time, her eyes for--were
removed for both cosmetic and for medical reasons and replaced with
glass ones.

LAMB: This--this picture is in 1946, I believe.

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes, that was just before the f--that's Helen with one
of her--her beloved dogs, and that was taken just before her house
burned to the--to the ground.

LAMB: And so what year did she actually have glass eyes put in?

Ms. HERRMANN: I would say around 1911, but again, I can't pinpoint
the date because the--the closest I've come to really documenting it
i--is that at the Helen Keller archives at the American Foundation for
the Blind in New York there is a bill to Annie Sullivan from a German
manufacturer of glass eyes. An...

LAMB: And that'd never been revealed before your book?

Ms. HERRMANN: No.

LAMB: Why did they--did they try to keep it quiet?

Ms. HERRMANN: I think so, and I think also Helen's family, I've been
told, were disturbed by the notion that she had artificial eyes.

LAMB: I--is there anybody living in her family at all?

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes, she has a number of relatives who are in Alabama,
and I've--I've met some of them and they are--were very charming and
very helpful to me a--during the writing of this biography. And I'd
also like to add that if anyone is in that area of Alabama, that you
can go to Tuscumbia and see Helen's childhood home, which is open to
the public. And that was another thing that was a revelation to me,
was to travel there and to see the place where the--the miracle had
taken place and also to--to run my hands over this enormous water oak
that is in the front of the--of Ivy Green, which is the name of
Helen's childhood home. And that was one of Helen's favorite trees,
and it's a very interesting tree, so I encourage anybody who goes
there to--to do the same and you will learn a little bit more of what
Helen's experience was like.

LAMB: Is this the house?

Ms. HERRMANN: Ye--yes, it is. That's--that is Ivy Green, and to my
right is the annex where Helen was--was born.

LAMB: Off to the right?

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes.

LAMB: And then right below that is a--a famous picture...

Ms. HERRMANN: Of a...

LAMB: ...or a famous point in this story. What is this?

Ms. HERRMANN: That is the famous pump where Helen Keller--she
reached her hand under it and she felt the rushing water and, for the
first time, realized that it was--that--that it had a name and that
she connected the rushing water with the--with the w--with the
word--the feeling of the w--of the rushing water with the word
`water.'

LAMB: You say that Annie Sullivan--and how old was she that day?

Ms. HERRMANN: How old was Helen?

LAMB: Yeah.

Ms. HERRMANN: Helen was six and a half.

LAMB: And on that day, Annie Sullivan started with teaching her
the--the word `water' and went on to teach her 30 other words that
day?

Ms. HERRMANN: She--she did that day, but the process had been going
on for some time before she made the connection. Helen was just
beginning to realize that these intriguing finger actions that Annie
Sullivan was making on her hand, that these might have a meaning, and
she began to--she began to become dimly aware of their connection with
the outside world, but that was the first time that she was able to
make the connection. In her book, "The Story of My Life," Helen gave
the impression, which she later corrected in other--in another memoir
that once she had made this association, that she immediately grasped
everything, and that was not the case. That--first, Annie Sullivan
taught her nouns, then she taught her adjectives, then she dropped in
the verbs. And it wasn't until many months had passed that Helen was
able to ask the simplest type of question. But that was
certainly--certainly the beginning.

LAMB: Did you look at any film of her, any documentaries to get an
idea of what she really was like--what she sounded like?

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes. Yes, I did. I've heard recordings of her voice.
Helen appeared in two films. One was a 1980 f--18 film called
"Deliverance," which has to be one of the craziest films ever made.
It's a--sort of a docudrama combined with symbolist imagery, and
it's--it's a completely crazy film, but it does include some very rare
footage of Helen, of Annie Sullivan--of Helen, believe it or not,
taking a run in a biplane. And she was a very adventuresome woman.

LAMB: How would she listen to music?

Ms. HERRMANN: She--her love of--of music, I think, has been
exaggerated, although there is some controversy over this. People who
were the closest to her felt that she really could only distinguish a
few compositions. She, of course, hated jazz, hated the vibrations of
it, and said, `Whenev--and when anybody ever plays jazz, I have a wild
impulse to flee.' But as for her knowing specific pieces--a great many
specific pieces of music, I don't believe that she did. It was
sculpture that was the art that she most appreciated because sculpture
is palpable as well as visual. And there were famous sculptures
of--sculptors of the period who would watch her touch these famous
works of art and they realized that she felt things in them that they
had just never--never seen themselves.

LAMB: How would she hear somebody talk?

Ms. HERRMANN: She would--she would never hear anyone talk.

LAMB: I know, but I mean, would--would she put her hand up on--could
she put her hand on the lips and--and understand what somebody was
saying?

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes, she was an accomplished lip reader. It was very
tiring for her to do this, but she--she certainly did this in public,
and she could tell a great deal from a person's voice. She could
distinguish, she said, a Northern twang from a Southern drawl, and she
knew a great deal from vibrations, and also from her sense of smell,
she could tell when a storm was coming.

LAMB: Did she ever marry?

Ms. HERRMANN: She never married, and this was, of course, one of the
tragedies of her life. She said once that, `If I could see and hear,
I would marry first of all.' She had one very tragic love affair and
her family broke it up.

LAMB: With?

Ms. HERRMANN: It was with this Peter Fagan, who was her young
socialist secretary. Helen was 36 years old at the time, and I'd like
to point out that she was an extremely beautiful woman. In her day,
people always talked about Helen's spirituality and how she reminded
them of some religious figure, but in truth, this was a physically
gorgeous woman with a beautiful figure. She had long chestnut hair,
gorgeous legs and--but she was not p--her family, especially her
mother, did not want her to marry. But Helen managed to defy both
her--her family and Annie Sullivan. This was the one time she really
did turn against them, and she and Peter Fagan had a love affair, and
then they were going to be married, and they went to the City Hall in
Boston and applied for a marriage license. And Mrs. Keller, Helen's
mother, got wind of it, and she told Helen that she could never see
this man again. But Helen was not to be stopped. She and Peter Fagan
devised this very elaborate scheme where he would kidnap her and then
they would be married by a friend. But this--again, the Keller family
thwarted this--their getting married.

And this struck me as terribly sad, that one night, when she was back
in Tuscumbia, Alabama, she was--she went out on the porch and met
with--with Peter Fagan. How she got these messages to him nobody has
ever been able to figure out. And her sister and her husband woke up
and they realized that she was communicating with him. And they drove
him off the property with a shotgun. And then, sometime later, they
woke up--this was--several months had passed--they heard a noise on
the porch, and there was Helen with her bags packed and she was
waiting for him, and he--he never came. And so then she really didn't
have any choice but to resume her very cloistered lifestyle.

LAMB: Did you look at her FBI file?

Ms. HERRMANN: I did.

LAMB: How did you get that?

Ms. HERRMANN: Through the Freedom of Information Act. And--and, by
the way, the--the FBI informed me in a typewritten note that the FBI
has never--had never conducted a formal investigation of Helen Keller.
And I think probably one of the reasons wa--had to do with her
handicap, that--I think at the time, that if--that J. Edgar Hoover
would have made a--a terrible mistake--I mean, I think he knew it--to
have--to have documented anything against such--such a radiant person.

LAMB: What did you find in it?

Ms. HERRMANN: That--during the late '30s and '40s, that she
supported a number of organizations that were later assumed to be
Communist-front organizations. But she wa--there's no evidence that
she was ever a card-carrying Communist.

LAMB: She a member of The Wobblies?

Ms. HERRMANN: She was, yes. She--she supported the Industrial
Workers of the--of the World, a--a militant singing union. She was
a--very violent in a lot of her political opinions and supported
actually rather violent measures. When the fight for women's rights
occurred, she supported--I believe there was a--a--a British
suffragist named Mrs. Pankhurst, who had--who s--wanted women to
smash windows and things like that, and Helen supported her
wholeheartedly. Interestingly, though, Annie Sullivan did not support
Helen in these beliefs, nor did her family. I think they were aghast
at her radicalism.

LAMB: But you say that John Macy was the socialist and married to
Annie.

Ms. HERRMANN: He w--he--yes.

LAMB: Now how long were they married?

Ms. HERRMANN: They were married roughly 14 years.

LAMB: Did they divorce?

Ms. HERRMANN: They never divorced because Anne Sullivan Macy would
never grant John Macy a divorce, and he had--th--they separated and
then he formed a relationship with a woman who was a deaf-mute and
they had an illegitimate child. And by this time, John Macy was the
editor of The Nation. He succeeded Carl Van Doren as the editor of
that publication. I think he was editor from 1923 to 1924. And she
would not divorce him. She said that she didn't want the publicity,
but the truth was, is that she was still madly in love with him, and
she wrote some very, very heartfelt letters about him and to him that
I've read. And she was passionate about him, and when he left her, it
really broke her heart, and then when he died, I think that that was
the beginning of her own end. And by that time, her sight was
failing. She went completely blind at the end of her life. And here
was this--i--it was a terrible spectacle to--for people to witness
because here was this spirited, fiery woman, and at the end, she was
completely emaciated and just--als--also, the--the thing that was very
difficult for her is that she could not reconcile herself to her--her
blindness.

LAMB: And where was Annie when she died?

Ms. HERRMANN: Annie--Annie was in New York.

LAMB: City?

Ms. HERRMANN: In--I believe that she was in Forest Hills.

LAMB: That's where they were living at the time?

Ms. HERRMANN: That's where they were l--they were living. And it
was interesting for me to--to study these two women, one of whom had a
complete disability almost her entire life and faced it very bravely
and said that she never thought about her limitations, and then to
read Annie Sullivan's letters towards the end of her life, and to
realize that she could not reconcile herself to her disability. But
that often happens, that a person who is born a certain way is far
better adjusted to--to a disability than a person who acquires it
later in life.

LAMB: Here's a picture of--of Annie and Helen from back in 1920 to
1924, where they were a vaudeville act. Explain that.

Ms. HERRMANN: Of all the roles that Helen Keller played in life of a
handicapped whiz kid, a lecturer, a writer, an advocate for the blind
and the deaf-blind, I think she enjoyed her vaudeville career the
most. Vaudeville, of course, was quite a tasteless entertainment at
the time that she was in it. She was supposed to be the inspirational
act, but she was the--the exception. Besides the usual circus
performers and jugglers, there were people that had been in prison,
who had been pardoned because they had lovely voices. They were on
the vaudeville circuit. There were--there was an acquitted murderer
at the same time that Helen performed, who had led a very bizarre
double life as a m--as the husband of a woman in one city and the wife
of a man in the other. And Anne Sullivan was very mortified by having
to go on the vaudeville stage, and they did this because they
need--desperately needed the money. Their film, which was made in
1918, "Deliverance," was a box office flop, and they needed money
desperately. But Helen felt the opposite. She loved being around
ordinary--not ordinary people, but she u--enj--joyed being around what
she call--the people she called her fellow citizens and she loved the
rush and the g--and the glare and the noise, as she put it, of the
vaudeville stage.

LAMB: They were on for 20 minutes...

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes.

LAMB: ...and then on page 226, you have all these Q's and A's,
questions and answers. Who asked the questions and who gave the
answers during the vaudeville performance?

Ms. HERRMANN: The audience gave the--would ask the questions, but,
of course, Annie and Helen anticipated what a number of those
questions would be, so the answers were--were rehearsed, and then,
when they were asked to Helen, Annie Sullivan would translate them
using the manual finger language, and then Helen would--would answer
in her broken speech, and Annie Sullivan would translate her
answer--answer back to the audience.

LAMB: What are these questions? I mean, I'll--I'll read one: `What
is Ms. Keller's age?' `There is no age on the vaudeville stage,' was
the answer. `Does Ms. Keller think of marriage?' `Yes. Are you
proposing to me?' Were these actual questions and answers that she
gave?

Ms. HERRMANN: Yes, in many instances. I don't know how much
ad-libbing they did, but I--knowing them, they were probably prepared
to think on their--on their feet.

LAMB: Question: `Does talking tire you?' Answer: `Did you ever hear
of a woman who tired of talking?' Question: `Do you close your eyes
when you sleep?' `I guess I do, but I never stayed awake to see.'

Ms. HERRMANN: That's one of my favorites, that one.

LAMB: `What do you think of President Harding?' `I have a fellow
feeling for him. He seems as blind as I am.' `Wh--who is your
favorite hero in real life?' `Eugene V. Debs. He dared to do what
other men were afraid to do.' And what did she mean by that?

Ms. HERRMANN: Well, he opposed the--opposed Americans' entry into
World War I, and Helen totally agreed with him. That was a very
unpopular stand to take at that time. But he was one of her heroes.

LAMB: Question: `Who are the three greatest men of our time?'
`Lenin, Edison and Charlie Chaplin.' Why did she think that?

Ms. HERRMANN: Well, I think Lenin because of his--because of
communism and because she certainly did--did believe--believe in it.
And who was the other?

LAMB: Edison and Charlie Chaplin.

Ms. HERRMANN: Edison because she knew him personally. He was one of
the many famous people of the day with whom she was acquainted. And
Charlie Chaplin because, when she made "Deliverance"--she was out in
Hollywood in 1918--he was very kind to her and invited Anne Sullivan
and herself backstage, and she read his lips and they evidently had a
very charming exchange. He showed her several of his films.

LAMB: One more: `What do you think of Soviet Russia?' `Soviet
Russia'--this is the answer--`Soviet Russia is the first organized
attempt of the workers to establish an order of society in which human
life and happiness shall be of first importance and not the
conservation of property for a privileged class.'

Ms. HERRMANN: She certainly believed that, and she supported the
Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks. Ironically, Helen Keller,
though, w--had to compromise throughout her life. There is this
discrepancy about her political beliefs, if one studies them. On one
hand, she denounced many capitalists, and yet she also accepted money
from them throughout her life, as did John Macy when he was married to
Anne Sullivan Macy. So one might say that because Helen was unable
really to provide for herself because of her disability, she was
forced to--to accept pensions from people like Andrew Carnegie. And
this humiliated her on--on many levels, but yet she couldn't--she
couldn't do with--with--without that type of help, not only from
Carnegie but from John D. Rockefeller, from Mark Twain, and I think
that her--her embrace of socialism and communism was something
that--it drew her because she--she would have liked to have been in a
position where she did not have to accept these various funds
from--from these people.

LAMB: All through the book, there are references about the sexual
r--possible sexual relations between all of these people, and you--for
instance--and I just want to go through the list--were the--Annie and
Polly and Helen Keller lesbians?

Ms. HERRMANN: No, there's absolutely no--no evidence of that, and I
have, by this time, read, I would say, 10,000 documents. There's
absolutely no evidence to su--support that theory.

LAMB: Were there any relationships, like for instance, between Helen
and John Macy and h--I wrote down on the list here, `sexual activity
with Alexander Graham Bell?' Did he have a relationship with any of
these people? Any--they came u--all this came up in there. Did you
find any extra sexual relations among any of these people by the time
you got your research finished?

Ms. HERRMANN: No. As for the John Macy-Helen Keller relationship,
there is no supporting evidence. The correspondence that exists--and
we have to keep in mind that that--the fire that devastated Helen's
house in Connecticut also destroyed--probably did destroy
tho--that--that correspondence. But the correspondence that exists
points to the fact that this was more like a brother-sister
relationship. And also, after John Macy left the household, Helen was
extremely upset with him. Anybody that would have--sh--she--anybody
that would have come or--or hurt her teacher, I think, would have been
somebody that Helen would have been--would have upset Helen greatly.
So it was--as far as I'm concerned, it was a brother-sister
relationship.

LAMB: Here's a picture of her at age, I think, 83 or so. What were
her last years like?

Ms. HERRMANN: Her last years were sad. She suffered a stroke when
she was about 80. Then she developed a diabetic condition. And she
lapsed into senility, a--so that this was a--it was a very slow
deterioration for her. But she was n--you know, never afraid of death
and she wasn't afraid of aging, and she died a very peaceful death.
She just drifted off in her--in her sleep, said people who were close
to her at the time.

LAMB: We kinda started out this way, but why did all three of them
end up at the National Cathedral, and at what point in their--after
they were dead did they find their way to the National Cathedral here
in Washington to be buried?

Ms. HERRMANN: Annie Sullivan was the first person to die, and so she
was cremated and then buried at the National Cathedral. And I believe
that she was the first woman to be buried at the cathedral. Then
Polly Thompson died in the '50s, and she was buried at the cathedral.
And then Helen Keller was dead in 1968, she was cremated and then she
was, following the funeral service, which was at the National
Cathedral--it was an enormous service. Many deaf-blind people and
blind people with guide dogs attended her funeral, many dignitaries of
the time, and then she was buried at the--at the cathedral, which, by
the way, I found it--to my interest that here was a woman who had led
such a quiet life, and if you--if you visit her--her grave at the
cathedral, you find that it's filled with sound because there are many
schoolchildren who come through to--to see her grave.

LAMB: What's your next book?

Ms. HERRMANN: My next book might be a memoir about my family.

LAMB: Here is the current book by Dorothy Herrmann, called, "Helen
Keller: A Life." We thank you very much for joining us.

Ms. HERRMANN: Thank you so much. It's my pleasure.

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Helen Keller: A Life