Grace Margaret Ballenger was born on December 18, 1939 in Shanghai, China. Her mother was half English, half Chinese and her father was born in British Guiana, South America, as a British citizen of Chinese descent. Grace and her parents, with her brother, Joseph, moved to British Guiana to avoid conflicts during the Japanese War. Guiana is where Ballenger lived for most of her childhood.

Ballenger’s parents spent most of their time with mission work with the Assemblies of God, and it is through the church that she was able to move to America. Ballenger flew to Springfield to live with her parent’s church friends and to attend high school and college in the States.

Her life is enriched through her education and work in nuclear medicine. She studied at Mizzou in the ‘60s and became chief technologist in Nuclear Medicine Services at Mercy Hospital. It was during one of her first hospital jobs in town that she met her husband, Glenn. The two were married in 1959. The couple have two children: Penny and Jay.

While religion had always played a role in her life, Ballenger really started getting serious about the church atmosphere when she started raising her children.

Read all of Ballenger’s story and the rest of the Ethnic Life Stories Project stories by clicking here.

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Music is Bach Cello Suite no. 3 by Colin Carr from the Free Music Archive.

Episodes are edited, recorded, mixed, and published by Diana Dudenhoeffer.