Kennedy Meets Helen Keller
Kennedy Meets Helen Keller
Kennedy Meets Helen Keller Side view of White House from behind trees. Quick but good newsreel of an 80-year-old Helen Keller meeting w/ JFK in Oval Office, April 8th, 1961, while she was in Washington to receive the annual humanitarian award of the District of Columbia Lions Club. MS's & CU's of Keller and her secretary, Mrs. Evelyn Seide, talking in sign language (using the "manual alphabet", a sign language in which each letter is signed onto the hand of the deaf-blind person so that he or she can feel it). Kennedy speaks and watches as aide translates into signs; then he takes Miss Keller's hand (don't think he's doing any signing, just holding her hand as a friendly gesture). VO says Keller, deaf and blind since birth, has become a symbol of hope and achievement to the handicapped everywhere.