Miss Helen Keller '04, Age 87, Dies in Sleep

Helen Keller '04, perhaps Radcliffe's most reknowned alumna, died in her sleep Saturday afternoon at her home in Westport, Conn. She was 87.

Blind and deaf after a sudden illness at the age of 19 months, she later became, with the help of her childhood teacher and longtime companion Anne Sullivan, the first person with these handicaps to acquire normal living and language skills.

"If I could see," Miss Keller once said, "I would marry first of all." But she did not feel that her life was a limited one. "Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times. But it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. The wind passes, and the flowers are content... I believe that all through these dark and silent years God has been using my life for a purpose I do not know. But one day I shall understand, and then I will be satisfied."