This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything

here on this show show from the arts to

sports and from history to business and everything in between and we tell your stories too

because some of our very best have been from the people who listen to this show from you.

And this next story, well, it's the story of Virginia Hall, and she's a World War II spy,

who overcame both physical and societal ills during a time when the world seemed to be tearing itself apart, literally.

Now for her story, as told by Judy Pearson.

Music story as told by Judy Pearson. Virginia Hall was once asked why she never told her story.

She replied that no one had ever asked her.

In 2003, I began asking.

My quest took me to her niece in Baltimore, newly declassified intelligence records in the National Archives,

then to London, Paris, and across the French countryside. I conducted countless interviews in English and in French, and read dozens of personal accounts. What ultimately unfolded was the story

of an incredible woman. She was intelligent, brave, and outspoken. She was loyal, daring, and stubborn.

But as a young woman, all of Virginia Hall's energies were directed at becoming a Foreign Service Officer.

At high school graduation, while her chums were thinking of marriage and families,

Virginia announced that the only way for a woman to get ahead in the world was with an education.

After several undistinguished years at Radcliffe and Barnard,

she went to the Sorbonne in Paris and then the Consolour Aqaré in Vienna,

from which she graduated in 1929.

Back in the States, now fluent in French and German, she applied to take the Foreign

Service exam.

...