For the first six years of her education, she attended a private school, switching to a public one during the Great Depression. She graduated from Pine Bluff High School in 1937. Under her high school yearbook picture was the quote, "Love its gentle warble, I love its gentle flow, I love to wind my tongue up, And I love to let it go." Her biographer noted that she was dyslexic, and struggled to read aloud. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, with hopes of studying premed; she had wanted to be a pediatrician when she grew up, but blamed her Southern accent for difficulty with learning Greek and Latin. Instead, she became a Red Cross Nurse's Aide in one of the organization's very first chapters, and claimed that, at one time, she had given more hours to the service than anyone else in the country. She eventually transferred to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and finally the University of Miami, At college, she joined Chi Omega and was president of Sigma Iota Chi. She was fascinated by the arts, and had dreams of becoming an actress, but her family would not allow it. She ultimately received a BA in history. After graduation, she worked for about a year as a seventh-grade teacher in Mobile, Alabama, before leaving the profession, saying she "despised" it. She returned to Pine Bluff in 1945 and, after World War II, she began work as a secretary at the Pine Bluff Arsenal. She was soon transferred (along with her boss, Brigadier General Augustin Mitchell Prentiss) to Washington, D.C..