Photograph of Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan Macy and Polly Thomson with friends in their garden in Forest Hills, circa 1920s.
From all of us at AFB to everyone of you in our community, Happy Thanksgiving! May these words from Helen Keller's 1946 address in London on the nature of Thanksgiving provide us with the strength and wisdom necessary to safely guide us into next year as 2020 comes to a close.
"I am indeed happy and honored to be with you on an occasion endeared to us by countless associations. How I wish we might all be back at home feeling the warmth and sweetness springing from our childhood memories of Thanksgiving!
But we know that true thanksgiving is not confined to time or place. Absence only deepens in us the ideals out of whose imponderable power America has grown, and to which it is for us to make ourselves a testimonial carrying light into darkness down the years. Yes, as the Pilgrims gave the best of their manhood and womanhood to founding a hearth-stone for liberty and the guarding of human rights, so can we fulfill high purposes that shall farther ennoble our heritage and render it a constructive power for good in the world."
The Helen Keller Archive is the world’s largest repository of letters, speeches, press clippings, scrapbooks, photographs, architectural drawings, artifacts and audio-video materials relating to Helen Keller, including the above two items.
