Believe It or Not

by Peggy Chong

From the Editor: Peggy Chong provides an interesting service to those of us who are blind and those interested in learning about the blind. Too often we think we have no history or that the history we do have comes from very extraordinary people whose accomplishments can’t hope to be matched by most of us living in the present and trying to carve out a future. Here, Peggy describes a woman who was given a life, took charge of it, and truly made it the life she wanted.

Greetings. Here is a woman I find fascinating.

On February 29, 1936, Robert Ripley’s Believe It or Not had as a guest on his New York City radio program over NBC’s WJZ, a concert pianist. Why? What was so special about a concert pianist?

She was deaf and blind!

Helen May Martin (1893-1947) began her career as a performer in 1922 in her hometown of Olathe, Kansas. Deaf and blind from early childhood, she liked to push the keys on the family piano and feel the vibrations of others playing while she placed her hands on the piano frame. Her parents, John and Helen Jane Martin, never told their child that she couldn't, or that she was limited in any way.

Mr. Martin was a traveling salesman for a plow company. He also loved to play the family piano and sing while holding Helen May on his lap. Her mother was a piano teacher. When young cousins came to live with the Martin family, Mrs. Martin taught them to play the piano.

Helen May and her mother played many games together to make learning fun. When her cousins practiced their piano lessons, she leaned against the piano and felt the vibrations and wanted to learn this game too. Her mother taught her several simple pieces of music. She taught first the right-hand part, then the left hand. When Helen May accomplished each part, they put them together. To demonstrate to her the difference between the notes, Mrs. Martin used navy beans. Four beans made a whole note, two beans were a half note, and one bean meant a quarter note. Thus began her understanding of rhythm.

Helen May was able to feel the music she played by placing the ball of her foot against the bottom of their upright piano. Over time, she recognized the beauty of each musical piece with its highs, lows, fast, slow, loud, and soft vibrations. When a new piece was introduced, she wanted to know its story to understand the mood of the music. The stories helped her understand the reasons for playing heavier at one point or softer at another.

Helen May’s mother taught her to keep house, cook, and sew. With the patience of her mother, she took on each task, repeating it over and over until she got each part down. Helen May took first prize in a local bread-making contest. When her mother opened her store and spent hours sewing dresses for her clients, Helen May did the housework, sweeping floors, cooking meals, washing, and ironing.

Through the ten eyes at the end of her fingers, she became an accomplished tatter, an ancient form of making lace. A lady on the streets showed Helen May her tatted hat. She examined every stitch.

“I want to do that,” Helen May signed to her mother.

Mrs. Martin bought the threads and gave Helen May a tatting shuttle. It took months for her to satisfactorily make even stitches, loops, and chains. Over the years, she made table runners, a flag, hats, and bookmarks.

The Martins had their own form of communication. Different touches indicated if company was in the room, it was time to eat, time to end a task, or pay attention to directions to walk. Later, the entire family learned to sign American Sign Language rapidly into Helen May’s hand.

No school would take a deafblind child in Nebraska, Missouri, or Kansas when she turned school age. With little support, her mother was her primary teacher. While still young, Helen May learned to read and write in New York Point (NYP), a reading system for the blind much like Braille. Her mother reached out everywhere for information and assistance. Mrs. Martin signed up her daughter for every magazine for the blind she could find to encourage her to be a better reader. The only library for the blind in Kansas, located at the school for the blind, served only the students at the school. Mrs. Martin found a way to sign Helen May up as a patron of libraries for the blind in California and Ohio to receive reading material through the mail on a regular basis.

Because there was no uniform reading code for the blind in the United States at the time, Helen May learned to read in several different raised formats along with NYP such as Braille, raised print, raised music, and Moon Type. Each library had its own preferred reading methods for the blind. Magazines were written in the format the blind editor read.

Her mother taught her to type and encouraged Helen May to write a diary. Some of her diaries still existed ten years after her death, but no trace of them is found today. She wrote news articles and prose for several magazines for the blind and sighted.

In 1912, Helen May wrote to the school for the deaf in Olathe, Kansas, asking again to be admitted as a student. Neither the Kansas schools for the blind or deaf accepted deafblind students, having no specialized teachers nor programs for the deafblind. At age eighteen, she received special permission to attend the Kansas School for the Deaf, older than the typical age at which most students were admitted.

The family moved from Greeley, Kansas, to Olathe. Teachers came to the Martins’ home from the deaf school campus for one hour a day. She learned finger spelling along with the rest of the academic subjects offered. She graduated from the program in five years, though most deaf students took seven or more years to finish. Helen May never had a grade below an A.

Before long, she was notating all her music pieces in NYP for her own use. Over twenty years, she transcribed more than six thousand pieces of music.

When Helen May was twenty and her little sister Gertrude only six, John Martin died, leaving Mrs. Martin to support her children. She opened a millinery store, selling sewing supplies and making dresses for customers.

In the spring of 1922, Helen May gave her first professional concert in Olathe. Her goal was to make this her career and become self-supporting for her and her mother. Newspapers from several states ran the story of the deafblind pianist. Lions Clubs from across the country were so impressed with her story that they asked her to come to their local communities to speak and to perform. For the next twenty-five years, the Martins traveled across the US, performing on radio programs, in concert halls, churches, and schools.

No matter where she performed, many doubted that Helen May was deafblind. Consequently, many professionals, leaders, and famous people came to her performances asking to meet her. Mrs. Martin, as her manager, sent out their story ahead of each new performance. Editors of local papers thought the story was a hoax and did not print anything in advance of their initial performance outside of an advertisement from the theater or sponsor. They too sent a trusted source to the concert to confirm if Helen May was for real.

In 1935, Robert Ripley, syndicated cartoonist and radio show host, heard of the fantastic story of a deafblind pianist. He too sent out feelers to determine if Helen May was for real. After meeting her, he booked her for a fourteen-week tour at his Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium in New York City in 1936. She appeared on his New York City radio program, also syndicated, bringing Helen May’s talent to the nation.

Helen May loved to “listen” to the radio. The president of a radio company invented and made a radio receiver especially for her. It was much like the family radio but had an attachment— a thin disc of Bakelite (a synthetic plastic) about a foot across, and this was attached to the ordinary radio. It magnified the incoming sounds thrown against the disc, causing it to vibrate. She placed her fingers and thumb flat against the disc to “hear” the vibrations. Her sense of touch was so keenly developed that she could tell if it was a man or a woman singing or speaking. She recognized many of the pieces she learned and deciphered what kind of instruments were playing.

She never stopped learning. Few magazines for the blind were available anywhere. She read almost every one of them. One music publication for the blind was out of France and written in French. Helen May taught herself to read French. The articles and books she read took her to places and described the world in a way her family could not.

She took music classes at universities in Chicago and Cincinnati, receiving a bachelor’s degree in music. In the 1930s, she learned to play the harp. When a Wichita banker learned Helen May was learning the harp, he purchased one for her and had it sent to her home.

From an early age, her family wanted Helen May to know only the good in the world. Her mother took every opportunity to let her “see” through touching everything in the home, around the yard, and every new place they went. Mrs. Martin described in great detail, the color, sounds, workings, and purpose of each item. She knew every plant in the yard, be it shrub, tree, flower, or vegetable.

Her mother described how color affected feelings. Dark clouds could mean sadness. While on vacation, Mrs. Martin was excited to see for her first time the Northern Lights. Helen May asked what it looked like and wrote about it later in her diary, describing the movement of the lights as being like a veil in the wind. Yet, she had never seen any of it; she understood its meaning, flow, and emotions.

This is an amazing story, so like the rest of the world at the time, we are challenged to “believe it or not.”

Peggy Chong is a 2023 Jacob Bolotin Award Winner. To schedule The Blind History Lady for a presentation for your business, church, or community group, email [email protected]. Purchase a copy of my book, Don Mahoney: Television Star at its new low price. Go to Don Mahoney: Television Star: Chong, Peggy: 9781098082956: Amazon.com: Books, and please check out my other works at https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/24325.