The Story of My Life

Helen Keller (1880–1968), born at Tuscumbia, Alabama, became deaf and blind at nineteen months. Her real life began when she was almost seven years old, on the day when Annie Sullivan, a twenty year-old graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, came to be her teacher. They were inseparable until Annie’s death in 1936. Helen went on to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904, becoming the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college. She attained high distinction as a lecturer, writer, scholar, and prominent worker for social reform. Her books include The Story of My Life (1902), The World I Live In (1908), Out of the Dark (1913), My Religion (1927), Midstream: My Later Life (1929), and Let Us Have Faith (1940). Ms. Keller received the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as many honorary degrees. Her burial urn is in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

Mary Woods began her career in Washington, DC, where she performed at Ford’s Theater, the Folger Theater, Round House, and Washington Stage Guild. She spent several seasons at New Playwrights’ Theater developing new American plays. She is a veteran narrator of Talking Books for the Library of Congress, and received the Alexander Scourby Narrator of the Year Award for fiction in 1996. Formerly a radio news director, she now hosts a daily local affairs interview program on Catholic Radio, for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. She lives in Albuquerque, where she continues to act on stage and in film. She received her BA at the Catholic University of America in Fine Arts and Drama.