Grace Barnett Wing was born October 30, 1939 in Evanston, Illinois, to Ivan W. Wing (1907–1987), of Norwegian and Swedish descent, and Virginia (née Barnett; 1910–1984), a direct descendant of passengers of the Mayflower.^[1] In 1948 her brother Chris was born.^[2] Her father, working in the investment banking sector for Weedon and Company, was transferred several times when she was a child and in addition to the Chicago area she lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco before her family finally settled in the affluent suburb of Palo Alto, California, south of San Francisco, in the early 1950s. She attended Palo Alto Senior High School before switching to Castilleja High School, a private all-girls school in Palo Alto. Following graduation she attended Finch College in New York from 1957–58, and the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, from 1958–59.