Famous Friends

Most people have heard of Helen Keller’s remarkable friendship with Anne Sullivan, her “Teacher,” who first taught her how to communicate.

- Karen Bush Gibson

As the news of what Sullivan had achieved with Keller spread in 1887, Keller became so famous that many people wanted to meet her. Over the next 80 years, Keller’s fame gave her introductions to a wide variety of notable people—inventors, writers, world leaders, presidents, and actors. Once they met her, many became her friend.

Bell’s Impact

Keller first met inventor Dr. Alexander Graham Bell when she was six years old. Her parents had taken her to a special doctor to see if anything could be done about her eyesight. The doctor referred the Kellers to Bell. Bell had become famous for inventing the telephone in 1876, but when Keller met him, he was working with children who were deaf. Keller recalled later that she could sense Bell’s kindness. She sat on his knee and examined his watch, which he made vibrate, to her delight. It was Bell who referred the Kellers to the Perkins Institution, which brought Anne Sullivan into Keller’s life.

At age seven, Keller wrote to Bell, telling him how much she enjoyed their meeting. She spent time with Bell and his wife, who was deaf from a childhood case of scarlet fever, at their homes in Washington, D.C., and in Nova Scotia, Canada. As a 13-year-old, Keller accompanied Bell to Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

Bell gave Keller both emotional and financial support. When she decided she wanted to go to college, he encouraged her and set up a fund to help pay some of her expenses. For her part, Keller dedicated her first autobiography with the words, “To Alexander Graham Bell, who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies.” Their friendship lasted until Bell’s death in 1922.