Edna Gladney founded the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society of Ft.
Worth, Texas. She was instrumental in convincing the Texas legislature
to pass the so-called "birth certificate law," which removed the word
"illegitimate" from the birth certificates of children born out of
wedlock. Her society placed more than 2000 orphans into good homes. She
was still alive and about 55 years old when she was portrayed by Greer
Garson in the movie Blossoms in the Dust (1941).