Mary Poppins Speech

This year has marked the fiftieth anniversary of many historical events, including the Rolling Stones first headlining tour, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of the “War on Poverty,” plans for the World Trade Center were announced, and Mary Poppins debuted on the big screen. However, the story of Mary Poppins, the nanny who flew in with the wind and who advised the Banks’ children that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, began long before Julie Andrews appeared on the silver screen in 1964. It began deep in the mind of young Helen Goff, a brave thirteen year old who was left at home with her two younger sisters. Her father, a severe alcoholic, was dead and her grieving mother had gone in the dead of night to attempt to drown herself in a nearby creek. Helen wrapped herself and her sisters in a blanket by the fire, and began to tell the girls a fairytale about a magical white horse who could fly, despite his lack of wings. This was the first time that she had dreamt up a story, and twenty-six years later, she would produce a children’s novel about a character who, much like the white horse, could fly. It would later become a best-selling book and a 1964 acclaimed movie of the same name - Mary Poppins. P.L. Travers, who was born Helen Goff, once said bleakly, “If you are looking for autobiographical facts, Mary Poppins is the story of my life.” Her father was an unsuccessful bank manager, much like Mr. Banks, who sought consolation from a liquor bottle. Though sinking into an alcoholic abyss, he encouraged the imagination of Helen, who often pretended she was a hen brooding a nest of imaginary eggs. As he grew ill from the influenza, her aunt Christina Saraset, Sass for short, arrived to mend the fractured household, and though she did makes things better, she could not save Travers’ father. When he died at age 43, her mother was wracked by grief and Helen retreated into the world of make believe. Travers moved with her mother and sisters to