As promised…
Here is a little background info on me…
Tyler Paul Foster was born on 27 June 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small rural town in Northwest Alabama,
USA. The son of Captain Stanley Robert Foster and Lisa Ray Foster I was born with full sight and hearing.Lisa was a tall, statuesque blond with blue eyes. She was some twenty years younger than her husband Captain Foster, a loyal southerner who had proudly served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.The house I lived in was a simple, white, clapboard house built in 1820 by my grandparents. At the time of my birth the family was far from wealthy with Captain Foster earning a living as both a cotton plantation owner and the editor of a weekly local newspaper, the “North Alabamian”. My mother, as well as working on the plantation, would save money by making her own butter, lard, bacon and ham.
Tyler Falls Ill
But my life was to change dramatically. In February 1882, when I was nineteen months old, I fell ill. To this day the nature of my ailment remains a mystery. The doctors of the time called it “brain fever”, whilst modern day doctors think it may have been scarlet fever or meningitis.Whatever the illness, I was, for many days, expected to die. When, eventually, the fever subsided, my family rejoiced believing their son to be well again.However, my mother soon noticed how her son was failing to respond when the dinner bell was rang or when she passed her hand in front of her son eyes.It thus became apparent that my illness had left me both blind and deaf.The following few years proved very hard for me and my family. I became a very difficult child, smashing dishes and lamps and terrorizing the whole household with my screaming and temper tantrums. Relatives regarded me as a monster and thought I should be put into an institution. By the time I was six my family had become desperate. Looking after me was proving too much for them. Lisa Foster had read in Charles Dickens’ book “American Notes” of the fantastic work that had been done with another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman, and traveled to a specialist doctor in Baltimore for advice. They were given confirmation that I would never see or hear again but were told not to give up hope, the doctor believed I could be taught and he advised them to visit a local expert on the problems of deaf children. This expert was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone; Bell was now concentrating on what he considered his true vocation, the teaching of deaf children. Alexander Graham Bell suggested that my parents write to Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, and request that he try and find a teacher for Helen. Michael Anagnos considered my case and immediately recommended a former pupil of the institution, that woman was Anne Sullivan.
THE END.
if you couldn’t figure it out…I was lazy so I stole the Helen Keller story for my own…so I am actually NOT blind, and NOT deaf.
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