MDBCs 27 Jun 2024

Celebrate human resilience and achievement on Helen Keller Day. Celebrated annually on June 27, the day commemorates the life and achievements of Helen Keller, American activist, author, and suffragist.

The unofficial holiday is also a celebration of human grit and hard work. It promotes the idea that people can overcome challenges and achieve anything they want if they put their hearts and souls into it.

A Life Spent Overcoming Challenges

Born on June 27, 1880, in Alabama, United States, Helen Keller suffered from an illness in her childhood that left her blind and deaf at the age of two. Despite her challenges, Keller learned to communicate in sign language with the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan. In 1904, Keller became the first deaf and blind person to earn a bachelor's degree in the US.

Disability Advocate

Helen Keller spent the rest of her life advocating for people with disabilities, supporting the socialist party, traveling the world, and writing.

In 1980, during her birth centennial, President Jimmy Carter proclaimed June 27, her birthday, to be celebrated as Helen Keller Day.

How to Celebrate?

Read about the life and times of Helen Keller.
Honor and celebrate people in your life and community who have conquered hardships and achieved something in life.

Did You Know…

…that Helen Keller won an Oscar for a documentary on her life? The documentary was called Helen Keller in Her Story. It was released in 1954 and received the Oscar in 1955.

***

I told my wife, Annie, about a story I heard on the radio. An eccentric millionaire married a dolphin at a resort where she swam with the critter.

"Isn't that nuts?" I marveled.

"But just think of the fortune she'll make when she writes her memoirs," my wife said. "She could call it The Porpoise Driven Wife."

***

During a home renovation, my grandfather was watching me drive in nails. "You hammer like lightning," he said.

"Really?" I replied, flattered.

"You never strike the same place twice."

***

Few people know what a quartermaster does. So during my aircraft carrier's Family Day, I demonstrated a procedure called semaphore—I grabbed my flags and signaled an imaginary boat. When finished, I pointed to a little girl in front and asked, "Now do you know what I do?"

"Yes," she said. "You're a cheerleader."

***

When a squirrel slipped into my house, I did the logical thing: I panicked and called my father.

"How do you get a squirrel out of a basement?" I shrieked.

Dad advised me to leave a trail of peanut butter and crackers from the basement to the outside. It worked—the squirrel ate his way out of the house. Unfortunately, he passed another squirrel eating his way in.

A Life Spent Overcoming Challenges

Disability Advocate

How to Celebrate?

Did You Know…

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