Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968), American author and lecturer, who, having overcome considerable physical handicaps, served as an inspiration for other afflicted people. She was born in Tuscumbia , Alabama . When she was 19 months old, she was stricken with an acute illness that left her deaf and blind. No method could be found to educate her until the age of seven, when she began her special education in reading and writing with Anne Mansfield Sullivan (later Macy) of the Perkins Institute for the Blind. Her home, Ivy Green, is where this mimosa tree grows.