You Oughta Be In Pictures

With a knack for experimentation, she developed a career in film and portrait photography.

- Virginia Page

My mom, Emily Frech Ballard, was the oldest child of German immigrants in the early 1900s. By the time she was in her teens, America was fighting Germany in World War I and anti-German sentiment had grown in the U.S. As a result, her father lost his job. The family of six had no income, so Mom left high school to work as a package wrapper at Marshall Field’s department store.