Nellie and Emily: Deaf, blind Stark County woman and her caregiver are forever linked

Nellie and Emily.

They were connected in life, and now are remembered together for eternity.

Nellie Zimmerman, the deaf and blind woman who was discovered tucked away and forgotten for nearly two decades in the psychiatric ward at Massillon State Hospital in the middle of the 1970s, died at 88 in 1994 in Columbus Colony, then the nation's only nursing home specifically for the deaf.

Emily Hensel shares Nellie's story: Former teacher pens novel about the Amish community

Emily (Street) Hensel, the woman who befriended Nellie almost 50 years ago, living with her for five years and helping her start her new life, died late last year.

"When we were living together, she used to like to go to Belden Village,” Hensel once explained to The Canton Repository. "Walking on streets was difficult and dangerous for her, but inside Belden Village, she could move around with little help.

"'I like to walk free,' she used to tell me."

Inextricably in death, the two now live on side-by-side in the memories of those who have heard their story.

Indeed, many are familiar with that tale of friendship and support. A multitude of newspaper articles about Nellie and Emily would be published in the years that followed her discovery – in Stark County, across Ohio, and throughout the United States.

Some of the articles about Nellie and Emily in the Repository in the 1980s told how Zimmerman had been moved from nursing home to nursing home after the death of her father, who had served as her caretaker. Finally, she was sent to what was then called Massillon State Hospital in 1957, where for 19 years she lived with dozens of women suffering from dementia and other maladies of the mind. She was hidden because no one at the hospital then was trained to communicate with the deaf-blind.

The stories told how Nellie smiled when Carrie Belle Dixon, a deaf volunteer worker at the hospital, finger-spelled, "Hi" into her palm. "What's happening in the world?" Zimmerman asked with her own finger spelling, following the question with a revelation and a plea. "I'm not crazy. Help get me out of here."

After Dixon tragically died in an accident, a friend of the volunteer, Jim Schneck, arranged for Zimmerman's release from the hospital. Nellie started her life over at the age of 71.

Remembering Stark: Ralph Regula and his seven presidential pals

Stories told of meeting

Some of the articles about Nellie and Emily in The Canton Repository in the 1980s told how Hensel befriended Zimmerman following her release.

"Hi" was the word, a greeting Hensel spelled into the hand of Zimmerman after they met in 1976, that brought them together.

"She kind of laughed and corrected the way I made my 'H,'" Hensel recalled in an interview with the Repository.

Zimmerman moved in with Hensel six months later. Hensel was in her late 20s at the time, surrounded by similar young friends.

"You have to know Nellie to understand how it could have worked," Hensel told this writer for a Monday After article in 1983. "If you can imagine me and five or six other people my age. Then there was a 71-year-old lady who fit in perfectly. In fact, if we wanted to run around, she could run faster than we could.

"I talked to a psychologist, and he seemed to think it was because she couldn't see herself in a mirror and didn't know she was old. She saw young people. We all have these social reminders that we are senior citizens, and we can't do this or that. She wasn't able to pick up on those reminders, so she did those things anyway."

Nellie danced. She wrote poetry. She spoke in public with Hensel – on 240 different occasions – lecturing at meetings of service organizations, prayer groups, church congregations and awards dinners. Many of the awards given out at those events were to honor Zimmerman and Hensel.

Nellie and Emily share lives

The two would share an apartment and Hensel's support helped Zimmerman to study at Malone College, the first deaf and blind student to attend the school. Zimmerman worked as a life skills instructor for deaf and deaf-blind boys at the New Life Group Home in Massillon. She also helped out at Apple Creek State Institute when Hensel worked there.

"Children I couldn't even approach came up to her and sat on her lap," Hensel once observed.

The two women helped each other while they lived together, such as on the morning Nellie cast her first vote.

"I don't know if it was a protest over the fact that there were no Braille ballots or what, but she went and voted, Hensel recalled of the 1978 event. "She couldn't read of course, so I read the ballot and fingerspelled to her. We went through a 16-page ballot that way. We tied up a voting machine for more than an hour."

Hensel and Zimmerman remained close, and Hensel's eventual marriage separated them only slightly.

"When I moved in with my husband, she kept a five-room apartment below us, by herself, for six months," Hensel once noted. "She kept the bottom half neater than I kept the top."

Eventually, however, Zimmerman left the couple and moved to the Columbus Colony, where she found love.

"Shortly after she moved down there, she wrote a letter and it seemed she sounded unhappy, so I went down," Hensel told the Repository in 1983. "When I got there, I saw her walking down the hall with this deaf and blind gentleman."

Nellie had a boyfriend.

Nellie and Emily pass

When Zimmerman moved to Columbus, it was Hensel who continued to regularly visit her, and to keep such newspapers as the Repository updated on Nellie's life.

Upon Zimmerman's death in 1995, Hensel arranged for a memorial service, and for her burial in Navarre, where Hensel lived.

Hensel had helped raise $1,300 for Nellie's burial expenses. In the end, her body was cremated and her ashes buried in a plot donated by the Israel Stuck Estate. The money that had been raised was designated to be used for other expenses, such as flowers for her grave.

"She ought to have flowers for a long time," Hensel said at the time of the service.

It was at that service that a longtime project, a book about Nellie, was revitalized. "Walking Free: The Nellie Zimmerman Story," was published in 2001. It's authors, Rosezelle Boggs-Qualls and Dr. Daryl G. Greene, were appropriate. Greene was the vision-impaired minister who agreed to Hensel's request to hold the memorial service at St. Paul United Methodist Church, and Boggs-Qualls was a hearing-impaired member of the congregation that Greene had asked to attend the service.

Hensel herself would pass in November 2023. Her obituary in the Repository noted that she was a retired teacher and nurse who took care of many elderly and infirmed.

Information offered online by Heitger Funeral Home specifically noted that "she took care of and was the interpreter for Nellie Zimmerman."

"She was preceded in death by her husband, Lloyd Hensel, with whom she spent 43 loving years," the obit said. "Emily spent her life fighting for the rights of the disabled and served on the Governor's Council for People with Disabilities."

Hensel once paid tribute to Zimmerman.

"I consider her to be Stark County's Helen Keller," Hensel told the Repository at the time of Zimmerman's death in October 1994.

And, in this month set aside for the consideration of women's history, Hensel and her accomplishments should be viewed in tandem with Zimmerman's – and herself no less than Nellie's dear and supportive friend.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.

This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Deaf, blind Stark County woman, beloved caregiver fight for good life