Later Life
Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home.
On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' two highest civilian honors. In 1965 she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.
Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut, a few weeks short of her eighty-eighth birthday. A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and her ashes were placed there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.
Read more about this topic: Helen Keller
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell,
By what was done and wrought
In season, and so brought
To light: her measures are, how well
Each syllab’e answered, and was formed how fair;
These make the lines of life, and that’s her air.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“we two
With life forever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity—”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)