Fern Persons
American actor, SAG/AFTRA activist (1910-2012)
Fern Gwendolyn Persons (née Ball; July 27, 1910 – July 22, 2012) was an American film and television actress and a member of the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists from 1937 until her death. Her film credits included Field of Dreams and Hoosiers.
Persons served on the national board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1976 to 1998. She also sat on SAG's Chicago Branch Council for 44 years and the AFTRA Chicago Local Board for more than thirty years. Much of her work at SAG and AFTRA focused on improving the professional acting opportunities for older actors.
Early years
Fern Gwendolyn Ball was born in 1910 in Chicago, Illinois; her parents were Mr. and Mrs. John Ball. She moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, as a young girl with her family and graduated from Central High School there. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in drama from Kalamazoo College in 1931, graduating magna cum laude and being recognized at commencement for achieving honors in French and English.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fern Persons” as american actor, SAG/AFTRA activist (1910-2012). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actor, SAG/AFTRA activist (1910-2012). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5444473. VIAF identifies the subject as 2036821. The Library of Congress control number is no92028760. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910, 2012, 1937 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fern Persons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.