Anne Sullivan Anne Sullivan Johanna Mansfield Sullivan Macy (April 14, 1866 – October 20, 1936), better known as Anne Sullivan, was an American teacher, best known for being the instructor and lifelong companion of Helen Keller. At the age of five, Sullivan contracted trachoma, an eye disease, which left her blind and without reading or writing skills. She received her education as a student of the Perkins School for the Blind where upon graduation she became a teacher to Keller when she was 20. Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hills, Agawam, Massachusetts. According to her baptismal certificate, her
Te Deum Laudamus (Sullivan) after the deaths of both Sullivan and Queen Victoria. The piece was composed for chorus, brass, strings and organ, and features as a recurring theme the melody of Sullivan's hymn tune "St. Gertrude", his setting for "Onward Christian Soldiers." Arthur Sullivan became Britain's most famous composer during the late Victorian era, and so he was an obvious choice to compose a piece to celebrate the coming end of the Boer War. George Martin and Colonel Arthur Collins visited Sullivan in his home on May 26, 1900 to ask him to write the "Te Deum". Sullivan wrote in his diary that