Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/716514
50 SAG-AFTRA | Summer 2016 | SAGAFTRA.org Snapshot by Valerie Yaros Snapshot by Valerie Yaros SAG-AFTRA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS X2 R adio audiences nationwide listened to their "Ma" from 1933 to 1960, when the 7,065th and final episode aired. She was Virginia Payne — "Ginny" to her friends, "Ma Perkins" to her legion of radio fans — and a trailblazer. On Dec. 4, 1933, this recent college grad found herself starring as a 60-year-old character in a radio show that would prove to be history's very first soap opera: Ma Perkins. In 1959, she achieved two more distinctions: Becoming the first woman national president of AFTRA and the first woman president of a national entertainment union. Devoted to serving her fellow AFTRA members, the ever-busy President Payne addressed the 1960 AFTRA National Convention delegates in Washington, D.C.: "We believe in a free labor movement in a free society and seek here to contribute our particular talents to it, our artistic insights and self-discipline and love of people … [H]ere in our nation's capital where history is so close, we remember our forefathers who dared come together out of diversities and found their way through them toward unity and freedom … We pray the greatness of their spirit, their courage and wisdom may mark our own deliberations for the good of the many, present and not present, whom we have the responsibility and honor to represent." Before her presidency, Payne was a founding member of AFTRA in 1937, president of the Chicago Local from 1938– 1944, and president of the New York Local 1958–1959. In 1962, she was honored as the sixth recipient of the George Heller Memorial Award gold card. She served on AFTRA's national board until her death on Feb. 9, 1977. After Payne died, her friend and colleague Eleanor Engle, a former Chicago Local President herself who had also performed in Ma Perkins, memorialized Payne and her life of service with a poem: Some figures cast long, long shadows Of depth and breadth and substance Disproportionate to the size of that figure Which stood there briefly In the sunshine of a memorable life And a kind of immortality evolves Before its appointed time And this we sense and are warmed By sharing that sparkling span of years. Listen to your 'Ma': AFTRA's First Woman President Virginia Payne, above, circa 1937, and center at right, at Chicago radio station WGN in 1940, meeting two of 1,206 aspiring auditioners for one of the many radio serials she performed in, The Carters of Elm Street. At the time, she was president of the Chicago Local of American Federation of Radio Artists (AFRA).