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How the Toledo Journalist Became Nationally Known
An author, reporter, pilot, explorer, hard worker, mother and wife. All of these terms could be used to describe Mildred (Millie) Benson.
For those who knew her, Millie was a down-to-Earth journalist based in Toledo. For those who knew of her, she was the first ghostwriter of the Nancy Drew series.
“Mildred Wirt Benson was the ghostwriter for 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. She was the original Carolyn Keene,” said Nancy Eames, youth service coordinator at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.
From the beginning
Millie was born on July 10, 1905, in Ladora, Iowa, a small rural town. She remained in Iowa while growing up and graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in English in 1925.
She was then the first person to receive a Master’s in Journalism at the University of Iowa in 1927. That same year, she published her first book, “Ruth Fielding and her Great Scenario,” volume eight in the Ruth Fielding series, written by the pseudonym Alice B. Emerson.
In 1928, Millie married Asa Wirt and moved to Cleveland. Just a year later, in 1929, she wrote the first Nancy Drew book, “The Secret of the Old Clock,” which was published in 1930.
The Nancy Drew era
From 1929 to 1953, Millie wrote 23 of the first 30 original Nancy Drew books. She wrote one through seven, 11 through 25 and number 30.
In 1937, Millie and her husband had a baby girl named Peggy, but this did not slow Millie down. During her lifetime, she wrote a total of 135 books.
In 1939, Millie then published her own mystery series, which ended up being her favorite series she worked on.
From 1939 to 1947, Millie wrote 17 Penny Parker Mystery Stories under her own name, Mildred A. Wirt. Penny was a character of Millie’s own creation, but they shared some similarities. Besides solving mysteries, Penny also was a reporter for her father’s newspaper.
During this time of writing mysteries, Millie also moved to Toledo and began working at the Toledo Times in 1944. In 1947, her husband Asa passed away and in 1950 she married George Benson, who passed in 1959.
In 1959, her final children’s book was published under Mildred Benson, titled “Quarry Ghost.” After this, Millie focused on her journalism.
Millie becomes a household name
In 1980, there was a trial between Nancy Drew publishers over copyright infringement.
While working as a reporter for the Toledo Blade, Millie testified in court as the first Nancy Drew ghostwriter, a secret she had kept for decades.
Because of this revelation, in 1982, the Library of Congress credited Millie with all of the books she had ever written. In 1993, the University of Iowa held a Nancy Drew Conference and honored Millie. Then, in 1994, Millie was officially recognized by Nancy Drew publishers as the first author of the series.
Working at the Blade
After the trial, Millie spent the rest of her life writing for the Toledo Blade.
Her passion was journalism, so many say she didn’t walk around the office as a Nancy Drew author, but just as a fellow reporter.
“I knew I was working alongside somebody who was extremely accomplished and important, but that is never the way she wanted us to treat her. She was your fellow journalist doing what you were doing across the newsroom, working hard and focused on what she was doing,” said Kim Bates, executive editor of the Blade.
As she grew older, after Millie retired, she was known for her weekly column aimed at an older demographic, but she wrote about much more.
“She tended to write oftentimes about an older demographic and she often wrote about flying and airplanes. As much as being known for her column towards the later part of her career, she also wrote obituaries and in my opinion, that might be something that she was just as well known for,” Bates said. “If you were a grieving family member and you got a call from Millie Benson who wanted to write a feature obituary, what a wonderful thing for that family.”
Even though Millie was hard-working when it came to being in the office, she still had people who would visit just to meet Carolyn Keene.
“It was not uncommon for people to just randomly show up at our building and ask for her… Some people were dressed like a Nancy Drew heroine… They brought books and they asked for Millie and they wanted her to sign their books,” Bates said.
Outside of writing, Millie held a pilot’s license and would travel around the world. Even with all her accomplishments, Bates said in the office, she was just focused on her journalism and wanted to be treated as a fellow reporter.
“She did more than most of us will ever do in our lives by far, but she didn’t wear that at all overtly. She was just working and really liked journalism and really liked telling people’s stories,” Bates said.
When Millie passed away on May 28, 2002, at the age of 96, she spent that day writing her column at her desk, doing what she loved.
“She was there writing the day she passed and I think she wouldn’t have wanted to go any other way. Her life was her writing and it kept her going,” said Jennifer Fisher, president of Nancy Drew Sleuths.
Nancy Drew sleuths
Back in the 1990s, a discussion board called the Nancy Drew Sleuths was created. This group would chat about all things Nancy Drew, but in 2001, they took a trip to meet Millie at the Toledo Blade.
“We went to Toledo and it was 2001 in the spring, and we went there to meet Millie because she was still alive at the time, working at the Toledo Blade; she passed away the next year,” Fisher said.. “So 12 of us went to Toledo. We met Millie at the Blade, had her in the conference room chatting with us and she signed books and talked to us about her writing career and lots of things.”
Just a day before this meeting is when Fisher first received the title of ‘president’ for the group. She has Millie to thank for this.
“The day before we did all that, I met Millie at the Blade because she was interviewing me for an article she was going to write about our group visiting her for a column and then I was interviewing her for an article I was writing for a serious book publication,” Fisher said. “While she was interviewing me for the article, she wanted to get an idea of what Nancy Drew Sleuths was, so I explained what we were and how we started and she said, ‘What do I call you?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m the discussion group moderator.’ She didn’t really like that; she wasn’t on the internet herself and hadn’t experienced all of this. So she declared she was going to make me the president.”
Since traveling to meet Millie in 2001, the group became a formal organization and has had annual conventions for 26 years. In 2002, just a month before Millie passed, the group traveled to Iowa to visit Millie’s childhood home.
“Our second convention was to go to Iowa to see her childhood home and go to the university and meet with the professors who arranged the big conference and check out her archive because she donated a lot of her papers to the University of Iowa’s Iowa Women’s Archive,” Fisher said. “She was excited we were going back to see all of this and delve into her archive. So she wrote another article about our visit to Ladora and Iowa City.”
After Fisher and Millie first met, they would periodically speak on the phone. Today Fisher is writing a biography on Millie, but it was Millie who first encouraged her to become a writer.
She encouraged me to become a writer in a way. I have a law degree and she said, ‘Well, maybe become a writer instead.’ It was interesting getting writing tips or advice from her,” Fisher said.
Since 2013, Fisher has been heavily researching Millie and after compiling “volumes” of research, she decided to format it all as a biography.
“When her daughter passed away and there was an estate sale in 2013, I was able to acquire some interesting research. Then, the family let me view a lot of personal papers and letters that they hold, which have been really fascinating to delve through, so I’ve been enjoying the research,” Fisher said.
There have been many books written about Nancy Drew and the various Carolyn Keenes, but Fisher wants this book to encapsulate all that Millie did, not just her Nancy Drew days.
“She felt like she had done a lot more than just Nancy Drew, but that’s all people would focus on. My goal with this biography is to not only focus on Nancy Drew because that’s very important, but also all the other interesting things she did in her life and all the other accomplishments,” Fisher said.
With Millie’s background in mystery writing, it wasn’t a surprise to Fisher that researching Millie would be a mystery in itself.
“She wasn’t one that would sit and talk about her personal life with people much. She kept that to herself. It really has been like solving a Nancy Drew mystery, putting all the puzzle pieces together of different parts of her life, her two husbands, everything that she did,” Fisher said.
While waiting for the biography to come out, Fisher’s collection of Nancy Drew books and memorabilia can be found at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library in the Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection.
Nancy Drew collection
With over 5,000 total items, the library holds the largest public Nancy Drew collection, all of which used to be Fisher’s personal collection.
“The Nancy Drew collection includes everything related to Nancy Drew. So not just the books that Millie Benson wrote, but all the ghostwriters. Books have been published in multiple languages, so we have them in all of those foreign editions. The back room is all memorabilia, so it’s things from the TV shows and the movies,” said Nancy Eames, youth service coordinator at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.
This year, the collection is a stop on the Ohio Creativity Trail, which is part of Ohio Tales and Trails in celebration of America’s 250th.
“That was such an honor that they put my collection on that. I was just so thrilled when the library told me about it,” Fisher said.
If you can’t stop by the Nancy Drew Collection for Tales and Trails, the library plans to hold a large convention in 2027.
“In 2027, it will be the 100-year anniversary of the Hardy Boys books, which were first published in 1927. So we’re planning a joint Hardy Boys – Nancy Drew convention next year,” Eames said.
Millie’s archives
Along with the Nancy Drew Collection, the library also holds a lot of memorabilia on Millie herself and a complete set of original Nancy Drew books written by Millie, which are in the local history archives.
“We have a full collection of all the books that she wrote. We have some of her awards and papers from her time at the Blade.” Eames said.
Thanks to Stephanie Elton, the public information officer at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, I was able to sift through the archives and learn so much about Millie.
During my time there, I saw a movie poster from 1939, letters written with a typewriter from Millie to her Penny Parker publisher, first copies of the Penny Parker and Nancy Drew series, pictures of Millie throughout her life, her pilot logbook, a People Magazine story written about her and a plethora of stories she wrote for the Toledo Blade.
While Millie has been gone for over 20 years, her legacy and the legacy of Nancy Drew live on.
“Nancy Drew was a role model and she had great adventures that were thrilling, she would right wrongs, try to seek justice for those that couldn’t help themselves. Even as it changed over the years, when different people were writing it, there was still that essence of Nancy’s character that came from the beginning when Millie breathed life into this character,” Fisher said.
