We detoured off the Natchez Trace and headed for Tuscumbia, Alabama to see where Helen Keller was born in 1881. When Helen was 19 months old she contracted a serious fever, which may have been scarlet fever or meningitis. This left her deaf and blind. Unable to communicate, she became a difficult child. You can see the room she lived in and the famous pump where Annie Sullivan spelled out water in one hand while the cool water pored over Helens other hand. Helen explained, 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.