Sullivan, Anne Mansfield (1866-1936), became known as the teacher of Helen Keller, a deaf and blind woman who won international fame. Sullivan was born in Feeding Hills, near Springfield, Massachusetts. She had visual problems as a child and in 1880 became a student at the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston (now Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts). For a while at Perkins, she roomed with Laura Bridgman, the first deaf-blind person to be educated in the United States (see Bridgman, Laura Dewey). In 1881 and 1887, Sullivan underwent surgery that restored most of her vision.