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BFB Permanent Blind Relief War Fund, 1910s Specimen Stock Certificate

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Stock & Bond - Certificates Start Price:25.00 USD Estimated At:40.00 - 80.00 USD
BFB Permanent Blind Relief War Fund, 1910s Specimen Stock Certificate
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New York. $10 Specimen Donation Certificate, Black print on red border and under tint, Company title at top with drawing of a nurse leaning on shoulder of blinded man, Return to Record & Specimen Dept. stamp at top, VF-XF condition, ABNC. In 1915 the American merchant George Kessler and his wife, Cora Parsons Kessler, organized in Paris the British, French, and Belgian Permanent Relief War Fund. George Kessler had been aboard the Lusitania when it was sunk by a German torpedo. As a survivor, he vowed to help veterans in some way, eventually settling on helping those blinded in the war. He then recruited author and lecturer Helen Keller, who had been deaf and blind since childhood. The Kesslers and Keller worked together, forming an American branch of the Permanent Relief War Fund called the Permanent Blind Relief War Fund for Soldiers and Sailors of the Allies, which was incorporated in New York in 1919, with Keller and Cora Parsons Kessler as trustees. In the 1920s the organization began serving blind civilians, as well as military personnel, and also began printing texts in Braille. This prompted the 1925 name change to the American Braille Press for War and Civilian Blind. Under this name the organization was one of the leading publishers of Braille texts, and it was responsible for the first Òtalking bookÓ (1937). In 1946 the name changed yet again, to the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind, as its mission expanded to include rehabilitation of the blind.