Anne Sullivan, Samuel Clemens, and Helen Keller

 

 Little Anne was 5 when she contacted Trachoma, a bacterial disease that leads to rough scars inside the eyelids, erosion of the cornea and eventual blindness.   At 8 her mother died of tuberculosis and the children were orphaned.  Half-blind, Anne Sullivan was sent to an asylum at Tewksbury, Massachusetts.  The nuns there mismanaged the orphanage, but loved the children and taught Anne to be generous. They taught her to finger-spell, a method of touching fingers to a palm to spell a word.  Perhaps she could help another blind person in some way. Anne was transferred to Perkins School for the Blind soon thereafter. Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama and at age 19 months contracted something, perhaps Scarlet Fever, which left her deaf and blind.  She lived, as she described it, “at sea in a dense fog.’ But she was not dumb, having devised over 60 signs with which she communicated to Martha Washington, daughter of the black cook of Helen’s wealthy parents. The Perkins school was eventually contacted and they sent Anne to help the Helen.  It was an enormous struggle at first.  Anne was relentless in finger spelling but 7 year old Helen didn’t even know what a word was. Then one day, Anne ran cool water over Helen’s hand, and finger-spelled W-A-T-E-R. Helen remembered, “I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten —A thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!"  That phraseology isn’t accidental.  Anne had shared her faith with Helen too.

            The brilliant student progressed rapidly,  Anne devised ways to teach vocabulary, not just names for everything.  The two were sent back to Perkins and then to 2 deaf schools in New York City.  At age 14, 1894, Helen met Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, and they became best friends. “To me, he symbolizes the pioneer qualities—the large, free, unconventional, humorous point of view of men who sail new seas and blaze new trails through the wilderness.” The famed author helped arrange for her to attend a secondary school and then Radcliffe College where she graduated in 1904, the first blind-deaf person to ever get a Bachelor of Arts degree.  She learned Braille and found she could “hear” music through vibrations, and identify people by their walk.  Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech using the Tadoma method, which means using her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker. She would travel to Clemens’ Connecticut home and practice on him. One evening he offered to read to her from his short story, “Eve’s Diary.” But how would they arrange it? She said, “Oh, you will read aloud and my teacher will spell your words into my hand.” “Well, I would have thought you could read my lips,” he teased. But she did.  She rested her fingers lightly upon his lips, felt his vibrating voice which she instantly identified as his southern drawl, and tried to not be mixed up by his gesticulations as he read. “To one hampered and circumscribed as I am it was a wonderful experience to have a friend like Mr. Clemens.  He never made me feel that my opinions were worthless…He knew that we do not think with eyes and ears, and that our capacity for thought is not measured by 5 senses.  He kept me always in mind while he talked, and treated me like a competent human being. That is why I loved him. Whenever I touched his face, his expression was sad, even when he was telling a funny story.  He smiled, not with the mouth but with his mind—a gesture of the soul rather than the face. Ah, how sweet and poignant the memory of his soft slow speech playing over my listening fingers…It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me, but when I recollect the treasure of friendship that has been bestowed upon me I withdraw all charges against life.  If much has been denied me, much, very much has been given me.”

            Keller went on to learn English, French, German, and Latin in braille, to write like Twain and to become world famous.  Clemens died 1910, the year after he had read “Eve’s Diary” to her. Anne Sullivan died in 1936 holding Keller’s hand, herself totally blind by then. Helen Keller lived and lectured for years until she died in 1968.  Her life was portrayed by Patty Duke in both play and film.  The interaction between Samuel Clemens and Helen Keller reminds us of ourselves and our best friend, Jesus Christ.  We are hampered with sin, but He found us not worthless.  We revere his Word, yet know that His Truth transcends the mere human words on a page--we see with eyes of faith. And though we are handicapped, He has given us New Life, so much that we cannot complain.  And we owe much to our generous human friends.  We “see” Jesus in them. Very much has been given us.

The Real Doc Adams

  

German Lutherans are often characterized (sometimes in humor by Garrison Keillor) as people who just want to fit in.  Samuel J. Crumbine’s German Lutheran parents emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he was born in Emlenton in 1862.  As a young man he worked in Cincinnati as a prescripton clerk and then moved to Spearville, KS, operating a drug store (It’s a tiny town next to Dodge City but in 1870s Dodge was the tiny town compared to Spearville.)  He returned to Cincinnati and graduated from College of Medicine and Surgery in 1888.  He practiced in Dodge City and married Katherine Zuercher in 1890.  Does this sound fit-in ordinary?  But life in Dodge City in the 1880s was rough-and-tumble with trail drives.  And Dodge had an epidemic of tuberculosis.  Crumbine knew this was caused by germs that spread by hands and house flies.  Flies flocked around outhouses and the tuberculosis infested dung, then spread it to food and dishes. It was spread also by use of a common water dipper and bucket for drinking and common towels.  Doc began a newspaper crusade to raise awareness, printed fliers and talked to saloon owners. His articles tried to get people to install screens and shut up homes to keep out flies.  Nationwide, 150,000 people died of TB every year.  But Sam’s articles didn’t change the non-hygenic lifestyles much.    The legendary lawmen of Dodge City—Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Luke Short and Bill Tilghman, were Doc Sam’s contemporaries. On one occasion, he helped Tilghman through pneumonia. The legendary lawman, later a US Marshall in Oklahoma, became one of the few to live to an old age (killed, serving in Cromwell).

            Crumbine’s campaign against TB did not go unnoticed. He was appointed to the State Board of Health in 1899 and became part-time secretary and executive officer of the board in 1904. Then in 1905 something interesting happened.  He got a visit from a Cub Scout leader who had fashioned a piece of screen to a yardstick.  It was dubbed the Fly Bat by the scouts and they had fun killing flies with it.  Still thinking about this invention, Crumbine attended a baseball game.  The game was a pitcher’s duel.  When one of the home team’s players got on 3^rd base the fans began to cheer for a sacrifice fly ball to the outfield.  Some guy behind Sam yelled, “Swat one!” Doc had a eureka moment.  He would promote the fly bats as “fly swatters” and he wrote another article entitled “Swat The Fly”.  It was a clean hit.  Evidently, people decided that killing flies was more effective than trying to keep insects at bay.  New tuberculosis cases fell by 80% in one year in the Dodge City area. Two years later, Crumbine quit his private practice to further his campaign.  He got brick factories in Coffeyville and Peru to print “Don’t Spit On Sidewalk” on their pavers sold to cities all over the country.  Posters showing Doc Sam’s mustachioed benevolent face with the slogan, “Ban the public drinking cup, out with the common roller towel, and swat the fly” gave him an international reputation.    Crumbine also warned against misleading labels on food and drugs. He authored Frontier Doctor: The Autobiography of a Pioneer on the Frontier of Public Health, which described his medical practice on the Kansas frontier in Dodge City.

            In 1911, during his tenure on the State Board of Health, Crumbine was appointed dean of the University of Kansas Medical School. He left Kansas in 1923 and moved to New York where he served as executive director of the American Child Health Association. After retirement in 1936 Crumbine moved to Long Island, New York, but returned to Kansas for speaking engagements on several occasions before his death, July 12, 1954. The Crumbine Award was established in 1955 in his memory and is awarded each year by the food and drug industry to encourage public health.

            But most of the general public today wouldn’t have know him, except that a certain TV Western, “Gunsmoke” used Crumbine’s life story and mustache to create a character known as Doc Adams played by Milburn Stone.