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Regional News
| Article published Wednesday, May 29, 2002
A PILOT AND AN ADVENTURER
Blade columnist, Nancy Drew author Millie Benson dies at
age 96
Benson: beloved
writer
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BY MARK ZABORNEY
and GEORGE J.
TANBER
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson, a newspaper
reporter for more than eight decades and author of the first 23
Nancy Drew mysteries that inspired generations of readers, died last
night in Toledo Hospital. She was 96.
Mrs. Benson became ill
at The Blade yesterday afternoon while working on her column and was
later taken from her Old Orchard home by rescue squad to the
hospital's emergency room where she died about 8 p.m., said her
daughter, Peggy Wirt.
Mrs. Benson - Millie to her friends and
fans - was widely acclaimed and internationally known for her work
on the Nancy Drew series, which began in 1930. She wrote the initial
books in the series under the pen name Carolyn Keene but was sworn
to secrecy by a contract she signed with her publisher. Mrs. Benson
did not reveal her true identity until a 1980 court case allowed her
to do so. The revelation made her an instant celebrity. (Read recent columns by
Millie Benson)
.jpg)
Millie Benson, in 'The Pepsi Skywriter' in 1987 at
Toledo Express Airport, was an avid aviator. She began taking
flying lessons at age 59, and had commercial and private
pilot's licenses.
(THE BLADE)
| Her
books, Nancy Drew buffs have said, allowed teenage girls and young
women to imagine that all things might be possible at a time when
females struggled mightily for any sense of
equality.
"Millie's innovation was to write a teenage
character who insisted upon being taken seriously and who by
asserting her dignity and autonomy made her the equal of any adult.
That allowed little girls to dream what they could be like if they
had that much power," said Ilana Nash, a Nancy Drew authority and
doctoral student at Bowling Green State University.
The
longevity and commercial success of the Nancy Drew books have become
as good a story as Mrs. Benson's tales.
"In the past 70
years, she's become a publishing phenomenon, selling more than 100
million volumes, inspiring translations into 17 languages, and
spinning off four movies, a television series ... and a bevy of
Nancy Drew products," wrote University of Northern Iowa English
professor Barbara Lounsberry upon Mrs. Benson's 95th
birthday.
| NANCY DREW |
Here is a
list of the Nancy Drew mystery stories written by
Mildred Benson, using the collective - meaning
publisher-owned - pseudonym of Carolyn Keene, and
date of publication.
The Secret of The Old Clock,
1930.
The Hidden Staircase, 1930.
The Bungalow Mystery, 1930.
The Mystery at Lilac Inn,
1930.
The Secret at Shadow Ranch,
1930.
The Secret of Red Gate Farm,
1931.
The Clue in the Diary, 1932.
The Clue of the Broken Locket,
1934.
The Message in the Hollow Oak,
1935.
The Mystery of the Ivory Charm,
1936.
The Whispering Statue, 1937.
The Haunted Bridge, 1937.
The Clue of the Tapping Heels,
1939.
The Mystery of the Brass Bound
Trunk, 1940.
The Mystery of the Moss-Covered
Mansion, 1941.
The Quest of the Missing Map,
1942.
The Clue in the Jewel Box,
1943.
The Secret in the Old Attic,
1944.
The Clue in the Crumbling Wall,
1945.
The Mystery of the Tolling Bell,
1946.
The Clue in the Old Album,
1947.
The Ghost of Blackwood Hall,
1948.
The Clue of the Velvet Mask,
1953.
Mrs. Benson also wrote under the
collective pseudonyms of Alice B. Emerson; Julia
K. Duncan; Frances K. Judd, and Helen Louise
Thorndyke.
She published books as Mildred
A. Wirt and Mildred Benson and under her own
pseudonyms of Joan Clark, Dorothy West, and Don
Palmer.
Source: Something About the
Author. | | | The
pluck of Mrs. Benson's fictional teenage sleuth attracted readers
then and now. Her own feistiness, work ethic, and fierce
independence brought her many admirers.
She was a pilot and
an adventurer who made numerous trips to Mexico and remote Central
American jungles to study archaeology. She golfed well into her 90s,
reported to work every day, and retained a zest for life and her
profession long after most of her contemporaries had passed
on.
"Millie Benson was one of the greatest women writers and
journalists of the 20th century," said John Robinson Block,
publisher and editor-in-chief of The Blade. "She was gutsy and
daring, a living embodiment of her Nancy Drew heroine. She
influenced generations of Blade reporters. I will never forget
her."
In January, Mrs. Benson reluctantly retired as one of
the country's oldest newspaper reporters. She had worked 58 years at
The Blade and the former Toledo Times. Despite failing eyesight and
diminished hearing, she continued authoring a monthly column,
"Millie Benson's Notebook." She remained fastidious in her reporting
and passionate about her writing.
"Going to work was a way of
life for me and I had no other," she wrote in a December column upon
her pending retirement.
In the column, she explained that her
legendary work ethic related to being hired by The Times in her
third try during World War II.
"I was told after [the war]
ended there would be layoffs and I would be the first one to go. I
took the warning seriously and for years I worked with a shadow over
my head, never knowing when the last week would come," she
wrote.
Beginning in 1990, when she was 84, Mrs. Benson
authored a popular, weekly column, which became "On the Go with
Millie Benson." She described the work as a projection of the Nancy
Drew philosophy.
"Nancy could do anything," she said in a
1993 interview before she was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of
Fame. "And that's what ‘On the Go' is geared toward - people who are
willing to go out and do things. It's slanted toward elderly people,
but it covers a wide scope of people, too."
Mrs. Benson took
great care in choosing subjects for the column. But it was the
columns in which she reflected on current affairs - whether the
state of daytime television or the disappearance of small comforts
from department stores - that generated the greatest response from
readers, she often said.
In recent months, as word of her
longevity and accomplishments spread, she became a sought-after
interview, appearing on NBC's Today and in a CNN news
profile.
Last year, WGTE-TV, the local public station,
broadcast a 30-minute documentary, The Storied Life of Millie
Benson.
"She was one of those secrets in Toledo," said
the program's producer, Greg Tye. "She had so many different
personas all incorporated into one person. She led such an
incredible life. She was such an incredible story."
Her
acclaim reached a crescendo in 1993, when she was the guest at a
Nancy Drew conference at the University of Iowa, where she was the
first woman to receive a master's degree in journalism in 1927. The
conference attracted visitors from around the world. But the star
was Mrs. Benson, who was profiled in newspapers nationwide and
interviewed on national radio and television programs.
First
editions of the Nancy Drew books she wrote became collector's items,
in part because - much to Mrs. Benson's unhappiness - the series
later was rewritten.
Publication in 1998 of a book about
childhood mystery heroes, The Mysterious Case of Nancy
Drew and the Hardy Boys, was the impetus for a resurgence in
media attention that continued until her death. She appeared on
ABC's Good Morning America and a Cleveland television news
crew visited The Blade for a day of interviews. She was written
about in People magazine, Ohio Magazine, and Newsday.
With
all the attention, fan mail flooded into the newspaper.
Book
owners would bring copies by the grocery bag-full to The Blade
newsroom for Mrs. Benson's autograph. She appreciated having her
work acknowledged, but she found the book-signing at times
wearisome, especially when she suspected the book owner was
interested in her signature for the monetary value it would
add.
Answering mail and talking to fans was a practice for
years.
"I answer each letter," she once said, "probably
because of a throwback to my own kid days when I wrote to movie
stars and then hung around the village post office, hoping for a
reply."
A lifetime of fiction and newspaper writing brought
Mrs. Benson scores of awards and honors.
Adrian College
granted her an honorary doctor of letters degree in 1999. Heather
Downs Country Club, where she was the oldest member, recently named
a room after her. She became the first recipient in December, 1998,
of The Blade's Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding
Journalist, chosen by Mr. Block and Ron Royhab, executive
editor.
In 1994, she was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall
of Fame and received the University of Iowa's highest alumni
honor.
She received a lifetime achievement award from the
Ohio Newspaper Women's Association in October, 1997, and two months
later a theater in the newly built 16-screen Showcase Cinemas Maumee
was named for her. The Ohio Library Association in 1989 honored her
for distinguished and creative contribution to children's literature
in Ohio.
Gov. George Voinovich signed a resolution in 1994,
commending her for a more than 50-year career in journalism and for
her literary accomplishments.
The previous year, Mrs. Benson
donated her Underwood typewriter, which she used to write the Nancy
Drew books, to the Smithsonian Institution.
Born to Lillian
and Dr. J.L. Augustine on July 10, 1905, in Ladora, Iowa, Mildred
Augustine wanted to be a writer from an early age. Her first story
was published in 1919 in the former St. Nicholas Magazine, of New
York. Her first book was published while she was a student at the
University of Iowa, where she was a championship diver.
As an
undergraduate, Mrs. Benson sold nearly 100 short stories to pay for
school while working for the student newspaper. She was a reporter
as well for the Clinton, Iowa, Herald.
"Journalism was just
what I was interested in," Mrs. Benson recalled in 1993. "It was
opening up for the first time for women back then [in the
1920s]."
While pursuing her master's degree, Mrs. Benson
submitted a trial manuscript for the Ruth Fielding series to its
publisher, the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which produced the Bobbsey
Twins, Tom Swift, Rover Boys, Hardy Boys, and other
series.
Pleased with her work, Edward Stratemeyer, owner of
the syndicate, offered her the chance to work on a new series about
a teenage detective named Nancy Drew.
What followed were 23
of the first 25 of the Nancy Drew mystery stories, written under her
famous pen name.
"I wanted to do something different," Mrs.
Benson once said. "The heroines of girls' books back then were all
namby-pamby. I was expressing a sort of tomboy spirit."
Mrs.
Benson was paid a flat fee of about $125 without royalty - "a small
amount even in those days," she wrote in 1995 - and was required to
sign away nearly all rights, including the use of the name Carolyn
Keene.
Mr. Stratemeyer died early in the series and his
daughters took over the syndicate. By 1959, the syndicate rewrote
the mystery series to make Nancy more compliant. And Harriet Adams,
one of the daughters, began to say publicly that she wrote the
series, a contention she maintained until her death in
1982.
In 1980, Mrs. Benson was called to testify as a witness
in a lawsuit involving the syndicate and publishers, ending what she
called "50 years of enforced silence."
The trial corrected
most false claims about who wrote the first Nancy Drew mysteries,
although because court records were not made public at the time,
some continued to credit Mrs. Adams.
As the true story became
known, Mrs. Benson received wider acclaim for her achievement,
culminating in the Nancy Drew conference in 1993 at her alma
mater.
Through the Nancy Drew years, Mrs. Benson wrote other
youth fiction using both her own name and pseudonyms. She wrote 13
books one year while working as a reporter.
In addition to
novels, she wrote Cub, Brownie, Girl, and Explorer Scout books and
many stories and articles for children's magazines.
Indeed,
she favored Penny Parker, hero of a series written under her own
name.
"I always thought Penny Parker was a better Nancy Drew
than Nancy is," Mrs. Benson said in 1993.
In an article
written in 1973, she answered those who suggested that Nancy was
modeled on the author.
"In writing I did feel as if I
were she, but then when I created the Dot and Dash stories
for younger children, I likewise felt as if I were Dot's obnoxious
dog, Dash," Mrs. Benson wrote.
"Not only in the Nancy books,
but in others ... ‘feel' for a situation and presentation of a
character with which readers could identify were my
goals."
In 1928, she married Asa Wirt, an Associated Press
correspondent, and moved with him to Cleveland and later to Toledo,
where she lived until her death in Old Orchard.
While writing
the Penny Parker mystery stories about a newspaper publisher's
sleuth-like daughter, Mrs. Benson was inspired to resume her
newspaper career. She joined the staff of the former Toledo Times in
1944. As a reporter on city hall, federal, and courthouse beats, she
competed fiercely with her Blade counterparts.
"I could
always get the story," she said in 1994.
Mr. Wirt died in
1947. In 1950, she married George Benson, editor of The Toledo
Times. He died in 1959.
When The Toledo Times ceased
publication in July, 1975, she became a reporter for The
Blade.
She continued writing books for children until 1959.
She won a $2,000 contest award for one of her later works,
Dangerous Deadline, the story of a cub reporter in a small
town very much like Toledo.
A publisher in the late 1960s
asked Mrs. Benson to begin writing youth fiction again. She
declined.
"The teenagers for whom I wrote lived in a world
far removed from drugs, abortion, divorce, and racial clash," she
said at the time. "Any character I might create would never be
attuned to today's social problems."
Throughout her life,
Mrs. Benson lived in the Nancy Drew spirit.
In the 1960s, she
took a river trip in a dugout canoe into the jungles of southern
Mexico and Guatemala, accompanied only by native paddlemen. At the
age of 59, she began taking flying lessons after answering an
advertisement for a trial lesson. She eventually obtained commercial
and private pilot's licenses with seaplane and instrument
ratings.
Before obtaining her pilot's license, she frequently
would hire bush pilots to fly her to out-of-the way archaeological
sites in Central America, where she pursued her study of the Maya
civilization, one of her hobbies.
She wrote about aviation
for The Times and later for The Blade and won awards for her columns
and articles, including the Amos Ives root award in 1974 from the
Ohio Aviation Trades Association for excellence in aviation
journalism.
Throughout her eighties and early nineties she
maintained a vigorous schedule. And she continued to work full-time
as a reporter for The Blade, balking at any suggestion that she
retire - a subject not often broached by her superiors.
"Talk
to my lawyer," she'd say to any editor who would bring up the
subject.
Fiercely independent and always willing to go after
a story she was assigned or had set her sights on, Mrs. Benson was
an inspiration and role model for reporters and editors
alike.
The day after she was diagnosed with lung cancer in
June, 1997, she was back at her desk working on her next column.
When told she could take the day off, she shot back: "This is where
I need to be."
As for her many books, she never read them
once they were finished.
Why? she was asked in a 1993
interview. "Because the minute I do I'm going into the past, and I
never dwell on the past. I think about what I'm doing today and what
I'm going to do tomorrow."
Surviving is her daughter, Peggy
Wirt, of Logansport, Ind. Services will be private. There will be no
visitation.
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