A tree that Hellen Keller loved to climb as a child has been cut down. The sprawling 200-year-old water oak was removed by a chainsaw crew from Ivy Green, the birthplace of Keller, and now a museum in the northwest Alabama city of Tuscumbia.
"Isn't that the saddest thing?" said Sue Pilkilton, the executive director of Ivy Green, confirming the incident, according to NBC News.
"For the safety of visitors and of our neighbors around us, we just had to take it down," Pilkilton said reports ABC News.
The tree had been damaged by a tornado in July and was hollowed out due to decades of insect infestation and decay.
"It took a whole side of the tree. It was like someone took an ax and cut it right in two. We're very fortunate that the limbs did not do any damage to anything," Pilkilton said of the EF1 tornado according to Times Daily.
The tree, which graced the front yard of Ivy Green, was of particular significance to Keller. She loved climbing the tree and had to be rescued by her teacher Anne Sullivan once from amidst its branches before a storm.
"Miss Sullivan had to climb up there and get her," Pilkiton said, according to Chron.
Hellen Keller was born healthy in 1880, but an illness left her blind and deaf. Her teacher, Anne Sullivan, taught her to communicate, and the two shared a very special bond. Keller graduated from college, studied to become an advocate and traveled the world before her death in 1968.