This inspiring story is about a woman who made national headlines for her many accomplishments. Yet, like Helen Keller, Nellie was totally deaf and totally blind. Her story is about what can happen when people fail to adapt to the needs of the handicapped and what they can achieve when people enable them to be all that they can be. When Nellie lost her hearing her father learned how to talk with her by using the American Manual Alphabet. When she lost her sight and could no longer see his hand signs he learned how to spell his words into her hands. But the rest of the family refused to learn how to talk with her in this way. After her father's death, Nellie was eventually committed to a State Mental Hospital. No one on the staff knew how to talk with her. Nellie lived in silence for 19 years. Upon her release, with the help of her companion, Emily Street, who knew this deaf alphabet, she was able to go to college, became a well-known lecturer, and worked as a life-skills instructor at a group home for deaf and deaf-blind boys.
A biographical docudrama about the deaf and blind Nellie L. Zimmerman. After the death of her father, Nellie was committed to the Massillon State Mental Hospital at the age of 52. With no one on the staff trained in communicating with the deaf-blind, Nellie lived in silence for 19 years. She kept her mind sane by memorizing her Braille Bible and playing complicated math and word games in her head. She was finally discovered hiding under a bedsheet, finger spelling the Lord's Prayer. After she was released from the State Hospital in 1976, at the age of 71, she lived her life as if she were making up for lost time. With the help of her companion Emily Street, she attended Malone College, became a well-known lecturer throughout Northeast Ohio, and worked as a life skills instructor for deaf and deaf-blind boys. This inspiring true story will give you rare insight into the life of this amazing woman, who won many awards and was recognized by the Ohio State House of Representatives as an outstanding Ohioan.
Nellie had an exhibit in the Mckinley Museum last September 2006 through November 2006.
Nellie Zimmerman was the FIRST Deaf blind woman in these United States to be rescued from a mental hospital and go to college!! As far as I know, she is the only Deaf blind woman to overcome all of the obstacles that she overcame in her life and go onto to try and tell other people, both able bodied and non disabled..that they could achieve things if only they tried hard enough and believed that they could at least try...to do more in their lives than society would let them.
Nellie did the "right things" in her life. She forgave those, who placed her in situations of adversity. She forgave, and tried to forget the evils that others did her and went on to try and lead life as best as she could with the help of her friends and those, who came to love her as family. I think that her efforts have earned her a place in history, which could be given her if her FIRSTS could be included in the First ladies library and her story be told and retold again and again so that future generations could learn about the unbendable spirit of a woman named Nellie Zimmerman.
