Tree Loved by Helen Keller Is Cut Down in Alabama

Sept. 22, 2015, 3:40 PM UTC / Updated Sept. 22, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

By Erin McClam

An oak tree in Alabama that Helen Keller loved as a child had to be cut down.

Workers at Keller’s birthplace, Ivy Green, in the city of Tuscumbia, brought it down in pieces with a chainsaw on Monday, The Times Daily reported.

Image: Helen Keller — Helen Keller, deaf and blind student, lecturer and fund-raiser, poses in New York on Jan. 8, 1946.RK / AP, file

The oak stood more than 200 years, but it was hollowed by decay and infested with insects, and part of it was felled by a tornado this summer. Managers at Ivy Green decided that leaving it up would be a safety risk.

“Isn’t that the saddest thing?” Sue Pilkilton, the executive director of Ivy Green, told the newspaper.

Keller, born in 1880 and left blind and deaf by illness, enjoyed climbing the tree as a child. Once, she was stranded in its branches until Anne Sullivan, her teacher, came to her rescue, Pilkilton told the newspaper.

Keller graduated college and traveled the world as an advocate before her death in 1968. Her relationship with Sullivan was the subject of the 1962 movie "The Miracle Worker."

Erin McClam

Erin McClam is a senior writer for NBC News, responsible for reporting, writing and editing general news for NBCNews.com. Prior to joining the site in January 2013, McClam worked at The Associated Press, where he spent 13 years and was most recently financial markets editor. In that role, McClam was responsible for a team of five reporters and a deputy editor that covered the stock and bond markets, financial regulation and the nation's largest banks.

Prior to that role, McClam held a variety of jobs at AP, including being a national correspondent and an original member of its Top Stories Desk editing operation.

McClam lives in New York.