In the photo, she's casting a glance to her left, elegantly dressed and adorned in rhinestones.

Put it all together and you'd be forgiven for overlooking the fact that she's leaning against a stack of flat cushions.

You might even think Dandy Barrett was a twenty-something woman in this photo.

Truth is, she wasn't. She was a 15-year-old. And when the Houston Post received the photo in December 1959, Barrett was a student in San Antonio.

"I was a rather unusual high school student because I was singing in night clubs," Barrett told me recently.

Back then, that meant going to private clubs. In the days when one couldn't buy a mixed drink in a public establishment, club memberships allowed patrons to keep a bottle at the club and imbibe whenever.

It was in those smoke-filled supper clubs and night clubs of San Antonio and the Southwest where Barrett entertained. During her high school days, a parent accompanied her. After high school, she traveled on her own for two-week engagements to places like Dallas, Kansas City, Mo., and Las Vegas.

"I did standards, blues, little bit of jazz. Pretty conventional things," Barrett said. Think Julie London or Peggy Lee.

The 5-by-8 photo was taken by her father, an Air Force pilot, in the family living room in Okinawa. A projector screen served as the backdrop. Someone wrote her name on the back of the photo along with her job title: "nite club singer."

The photo is one of thousands over the decades that have ended up at the Post and Houston Chronicle. Some are by staff photographers and some, like this one, are handouts, meant to promote a cause, an event or an entertainer. Sometimes the photos would appear in the newspaper, sometimes not. Often, the photo would be filed away and forgotten.

Barrett suspects the photo ended up at the Post to promote a 45 rpm single she recorded in San Antonio.

Now a grandmother, Barrett is still onstage entertaining audiences. She's managing director of The Collective Face Theater Ensemble, a nonprofit repertory theater company in Savannah, Ga.

In the decades leading up to her life today, she studied political science, business, worked for Texas Sen. Ralph Yarborough in Washington, D.C., and later worked in the corporate field for Clorox, Pitney Bowes and CarMax.

"I had a split personality," Barrett said, reflecting on what she wanted be when she was younger. "I wanted either to be in show business or I wanted to be in government, which seems incongruous I know. And that is precisely what my life has done over the years."

She has always pushed boundaries. She was rebuffed from applying to two colleges - including the U.S. Air Force Academy - because of her gender.

Listen as Dandy Barrett talks about recording a 45 rpm single in San Antonio. In the second clip, she discusses the challenge ofgetting into the college of her choice as a woman in the 1960s.

There's also been tragedy. That came in 1994 when her father escorted an abortion doctor to a clinic in Pensacola. Both were gunned down as the two entered the parking lot.

James H. Barrett nurtured her interest in entertainment. He had a tenor voice. He performed in operettas in high school and college. And though he made a career out of the Air Force -- flying in World War II, Korea and Vietnam -- he never stopped singing.

"I learned to sing with him when I was a tiny tyke," she said, recalling how the two would sing in the car when traveling from one duty station to another.

Like her father, she hasn't stopped singing. She still does it from time to time with The Collective Face.

During our lengthy conversation, I asked her how she was able to pursue stage work while working in the boardrooms of the business world.

"It is easy to become singly focused and let that job become all-encompassing so that you don't have time for anything else," she said. "What's going to hold you in good stead as you move through your life is that you have a passion for one thing or two things or three things. And never let that passion go. Never."