Tribute by Dr. John Finley
Item Information
- Title:
- Tribute by Dr. John Finley
- Description:
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Dr. John Finley Oct. 22nd, 1936 The wish having been expressed by Helen Keller that I should say a word in tribute to the memory of her teacher, I cannot do otherwise than attempt this, however inadequate the word, as all words must be. Some months ago when the ceremonies in dedication of the new building of the American Foundation for the Blind were to be held, Mrs. Macy, blinded herself, was lying in a hospital, but it was arranged that she might hear by radio, all the speaking and singing including the voice of her whom she had taught to speak. On that occasion I repeated sentences from the address sent to me by Helen which she had made on receiving the honorary degree from the University of Glasgow, and I am sure that her pupil would wish them to be repeated here: "When I think of what one loving human being has done for me, I realize what will some day happen to mankind, when heart and brains work together. Darkness and silence need not bar the progress of the immortal spirit." That one loving human being we would by a spiritual radio reach today and say again, as we said that day: "In all the annals of the race of men, From Homer's time till now in all our ken, What no one else had ever done, you've done; Wrought two great loving miracles in one." She once said in a letter to Helen, "God Himself cannot make this a kindlier world without us." And even He could not have done what was done for this blind, deaf, speechless child without the assistance of the genius of this Teacher, herself lifted from misery and blindness by human help. It has been said that Mrs. Macy literally put the whole world into the hand of Helen, her pupil. As illustrations of this terrestrial and cosmic relationship, I quote two letter that I have had from Helen: one which she sent me from the Thomas Hardy country, and the other from New York City. From the ten page letter about her sojourn in the Hardy country: "From the cottage we drove through winding lanes of bluebells, ragged robins, and showers of other flowers to the little church, dating back to 1196, so poetically associated with the name of Hardy. Like so many English chapels, it stands in a private park. When I stepped into the burying-ground, my hand reached out, and on the white face of a stone, I read 'Here is the heart of Thomas Hardy.' The sun shone upon it caressingly, and flowers garlanded it with living sweetness. All round the birds in the hedges were singing their joyous life - song in the presence of death - as if they knew it was not death, but the beginning of life. The thought came to me, 'The bludgeonings of fate were powerless to make Thomas Hardy flinch, he received them with lifted head like a free spirit. Now Strife has passed with all its drums, and his heart rests here among his dear ones, his mother and father and neighbors -- in the Heart of Peace." And in response to my inquiry as to what she saw from the tower of the Empire State Building, this beautiful cosmic fragment: - "There was the Hudson - more like the flesh of a sword-blade than a noble river. The little island of Manhattan, set like a jewel in its next of rainbow waters, stared up into my face, and the solar system circled about my head! Why, I thought, the sun and the stars are suburbs of New York, and I never knew it! I had a sort of wild desire to invest in a bit of real estate on one of the planets. All sense of depression and hard times vanished, I felt like being frivolous with the stars. But that was only for a moment.......... Let cynics and supersensitive souls say what they will about American materialism and machine civilization. Beneath the surface are poetry, mysticism, and inspiration that the Empire Building somehow symbolizes. In that giant shaft I see a groping toward beauty and spiritual vision. I am one of those who see, and yet believe." She was to have received a medal from the Roosevelt Association, and I tried to have it put into her hands before she went. But after all, she needed no such passport to immortality. The Lord of Light could but know of her light - giving labor through the years, a sacrificing service that was as heroic as that of the mythical Prometheus who brought fire to mortals. The lamp which was his emblem, borne through the "divine gloom" in Shelley's phrase, was also here, who in carrying it triumphantly, lighted the way of the sightless child into glorious womanhood and will be carried by others beyond her grave to the far goal of time. She will herself no longer need it for she is in the assembly of those who need not the light of the sun or the moon or the man-made lamp, for the Lord God giveth them light."
- Name on Item:
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Dr. John Finley
- Date:
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1936
- Format:
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Letters/Correspondence
Manuscripts
- Location:
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Perkins School for the Blind
Samuel P. Hayes Research Library - Collection (local):
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Condolence Letters and Clippings
- Subjects:
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Blind
Perkins School for the Blind
- Permalink:
- https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/b85164304
- Terms of Use:
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Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA
Contact host institution for more information.
- Notes:
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Text of the tribute to Anne Sullivan Macy. Dr. Finley was the Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times, President of the New York Association for the Blind for twenty-six years and the chairman of the New York State Commission for the Blind.
- Accession #:
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AG88-n-19
