Because it's been exceptionally quiet on the list today, I might as well add
this brief note, for what it's wirt:

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Mildred Wirt Benson, Author of Nancy Drew Mysteries, Dies at 96

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:20 p.m. ET

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- Mildred Wirt Benson, the author who created Nancy Drew,
girl sleuth, and inspired generations of young women with the teen-age
heroine's spunk, independence and resourcefulness, has died at 96.

Benson fell ill Tuesday at The Blade newspaper, where she wrote a weekly
column about daily life and the elderly. She died later at a hospital.

Using the pen name Carolyn Keene, Benson wrote 23 of the 30 original Nancy
Drew mysteries about the stylishly dressed, golden-haired rich girl who
tooled around in her own roadster and solved crimes.

Dozens of ghost writers followed Benson, and the Nancy Drew series is still
in print. It has sold over 200 million books in 17 languages.

Fans say the books allowed girls and young women to dream of exciting careers
at a time when females had few role models in print. Celebrities like actress
Demi Moore and journalist Barbara Walters have said they were inspired by the
daring detective.

``I grew up on Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins,'' Walters said in 1998.
``The Bobbsey Twins were goody-goody, and Nancy Drew was fearless. I wanted
to be somewhere between both.''

``Every woman wanted to be her,'' said Suzanne Meglan, who was shopping at a
suburban Columbus bookstore Wednesday. She read the books and bought them for
her daughter. Now her grandchildren are reading them.

Benson began writing in Ladora, Iowa, where she was born July 10, 1905. She
wrote children's stories when she was in grade school and won her first
writing award at 14.

``I had no other thought except that I wanted to write,'' she said.

She was introduced to journalism through her first husband, Asa Wirt, who
worked with The AP. In 1944, Benson began working at the former Toledo Times
and later at The Blade.

Despite failing eyesight and diminished hearing, she continued to write. The
day after she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1997, she was back at her
desk working on her next column.

``She was gutsy and daring, a living embodiment of her Nancy Drew heroine,''
said John Robinson Block, publisher and editor in chief of The Blade.

Benson recalled her lifelong love of books in her final column, published in
The Blade on Wednesday. ``I consider it an honor to have been born near the
turn of the 20th century, at about the time when public libraries were first
coming into popular use,'' she wrote.

Wirt died in 1947. Benson's second husband, George Benson, editor of The
Toledo Times, died in 1959. She is survived by her daughter, Peggy Wirt. The
funeral will be private.

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Joseph Wirt Atmar

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