Joseph Z. Terrell (right) was born in Hanover County, Virginia, December 28. 1872. He had a common-school education and as a youth learned telegraphy and became a railroad operator. In 1892 he entered the service of the Baltimore & Ohio as an operator. He was operator, agent, yardmaster and held various other places in the operating, accounting and traffic departments. For several years he was agent, and was also freight and passenger agent. October 1. 1918, Mr. Terrell was selected by Governor Cornwell as warden of the West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville. He served until June 1. 1923. Mr. Terrell would be averse to classification as a prison reformer. Prisoners have been treated as human beings, and he has encouraged athletics, has introduced wholesome entertainment, including moving pictures, and so far as possible has conducted the institution with a view to inculcating a proper sense of individual responsibility and respect for law and training the individuals for responsible citizenship.

His first wife, Miss Suzy McAdams of Morgan County, died in 1907, leaving one son, Claude M. (b. 1896), who later became an attorney. In 1909 Mr. Terrell married Harriett "Hattie" E. Lee of Mineral County, West Virginia. After having lost a baby boy in 1910 they had a daughter, Barbara Lee who was born October 27. 1915 in Keyser, Mineral County, West Virginia.

When her father became warden from 1918 to 1923 she spent time in prison as daughter of the warden. In Debs His Authorized Life and Letters from Woodstock Prison to Atlanta David Karsner's 1919 biography of Eugene Victor Debs (4) she is mentioned:

"... At the warden's invitation we dined with him and his family that evening. As we chatted with Debs's keeper and his wife in their private apartments on the top floor of the prison, the warden's little girl, Barbara Lee, romped and played on the floor. Debs's name was mentioned frequently, and finally the brown-eyed baby looked up into her father's eyes and asked: 'Daddy, who is Debs?' The warden gently referred the child's inquiry to me. With a bound she ran over to me and climbed upon my lap. I had been playing patty-cake, patty-cake, baker's man" with her.
'Debs is a good, kind man,' I told her, 'who loves all little boys and girls. And all little boys and girls who meet him come to love him, too. If he were up here now he would get right down there on the floor and play with you.' The little girl danced off my lap and ran over to the warden, clapping her hands with Lee. 'Oh, Daddy Mr. Debs is a kind man who loves children, and he plays with them, too; do you think he will ever come upstairs and play with me?' There was anxious hope in the baby's voice as she put her unanswerable question. None of us knew how to reply to the child whose imagination had been gripped by the thought of a possible playmate.
'No, I don't think Mr. Debs will ever have time to come up and play with you, Barbara Lee,' said her father finally, 'but you shall see him some day.' The little girl ran back to me as though I could somehow bring into being the thoughts that raced through her mind. I told her that some day, when she had grown to be a big girl, she might be glad and proud that she had once lived in the same house with Debs. I told her that many of his friends would wish they could say they had lived under the same roof with him. She looked at me wonderingly with big, brown eyes. ..." 

So Barbara spent her childhood in Moundsville, West-Virginia. Trustees taught Barbara to skip rope. She had the buggies, dolls and playthings of any little girl anywhere. They were gifts from almost 2000 prisoners mostly men, to whom she was everything.

Her father Joe always boasted he could control two thousand convicts but not his little daughter. She wanted to go to dramatic school. Her parents wanted her to go to college. She went to dramatic school and played summer stock in New York State.

Terrell, having drawn the applause of parents in West Virginia high school productions, was first drawn to New York by the lure of stage. She graduated from the Feagin dramatic school into a Broadway role in Behind Red Lights (Mansfield Theatre, Jan 13. - Nov 1. 1937).

Times were tough, so Barbara got a job selling men's gloves in a department store. Later she ran the check room in New York's Mansfield Theater. She met Mitzi Gould, the young radio actress, who asked her to fill in at a rehearsal when Mitzi couldn't get there. The director liked Barbara's voice and she was "all set." She became the heroine in a two-minute commercial. Then came bit breaks on Fred Allen, Mr. District Attorney and other shows.

In 1937 a group of young actors labored valiantly at the John Golden Theater in Manhattan with a farce-comedy called Places, Please, a play of backstage life by Aurania Rouverol. According to a critic they were aided and abetted by a very pleasantly disposed first-night audience but the three act play wasn't very amusing. Barbara played the role of Sylvia O'Connor.

Barbara Terrell was vacationing at her home in Clarksburg, West Virginia (June, 1937).

February 1938 Barbara Terrell, "legit actress" joined the regular cast of the Hinds Theatre of the Air (CBS).

She took part in such shows as Lorenzo Jones (NBC, ca 1940) and Superman* (Mutual, 1941-1942). For the latter she was chosen in the leading role of Lois Lane out of field of 30 girls who auditioned for the role. Manhattan at Midnight had Barbara in the starring role (Aug 1941)

The first radio incarnation of what later would become We Love and Learn was called As The Twig Is Bent and launched on March 24. 1941. Produced by Transamerican for General Foods, scripted by Don Becker and Ann Barley it was directed by Basil Loughran. It concerned the small-minded citizens of Beechmont and their resistance to a new school marm. Because of the classroom scenes, it involved probably the largest casts of any daytime serial to date. Barbara Terrell (Andrea Reynolds) and George Coulouris played the leads in this version and it also featured Frank Lovejoy (as Bill), Karl Swenson and Henry M. Neeley.

Living in Manhattan by the end of 1941 Barbara Lee got married to two-year-older Omar Bostick Sander, who was later wounded by a land mine in Normandy.