About Eileen Ford
Eileen Cecile Ford (née Otte; March 25, 1922 – July 9, 2014) was an American modeling agency executive. Along with her husband Gerard "Jerry" Ford, she co-founded Ford Models in 1946, which emerged as one of the earliest and most successful modeling agencies in the mid and late-20th century. == Early life and education == Eileen Cecile Ottensoser was born in Manhattan, New York City, and raised in suburban Great Neck on Long Island, the only daughter of four children of Loretta Marie (née Laine) and Nathaniel Ottensoser. Nathaniel was an "upmarket Jewish debt collector". Eileen took great pains to hide her Jewish heritage and would keep it a secret from her own children. She attended Barnard College, where she was a model during the summers of her freshman and sophomore years for Harry Conover's modeling agency, one of the first in the United States. She graduated from Barnard in 1943. She changed her last name to Otte and developed a WASP identity to avoid the Jewish Quota. She had a short-lived marriage with a naval officer, however, marriage ended when he was killed in 1944. Then, in 1944, she met her future husband, Gerard "Jerry" Ford, at a drugstore near the Columbia University.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.