[2] Much of her work at SAG and AFTRA focused on improving the professional acting opportunities for older actors.

[2] Fern Gwendolyn Ball was born in 1910 in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, as a young girl with her family.

[2] The family, which now included a newborn daughter, then moved to Chicago so Persons could pursue her acting career in the latter half of the 1930s.

She was elected to the Chicago Branch Council in 1962 and served for forty-four years until 2006, when she stepped down only because she could no longer drive.

On July 27, 1999, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley officially declared "Fern Persons Day" to mark her 89th birthday.