Lauren Bacall in "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996). Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in The Bronx, New York, the only child of Natalie ("née" Weinstein; 1901–1977), a secretary who later legally changed her surname to Bacal, and William Perske (1889–1982), who worked in sales. Both her parents were Jewish. According to Bacall, her mother emigrated from Iași, the Kingdom of Romania, through Ellis Island, and her father was born in New Jersey to parents who were born in Valozhyn, a significant center of Jewish life, in present-day Belarus, then in the Russian Empire. Soon after her
Poni Adams served as the last administrator of the Veterans Administration before the VA became a cabinet department during Ronald Reagan's presidential term. Adams and Turnage had two children. On May 21, 2014, Adams died in Bellingham, Washington, at the age of 92. She was buried (as Betty J. Turnage) beside her husband in Arlington National Cemetery. Poni Adams Betty Jane Bierce, better known by her stage name Jane "Poni" Adams (August 7, 1921 – May 21, 2014), was an American actress in radio, film, and television in the 1940s and 1950s. The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Mason Bierce, Adams was