Iowa Almanac
Iowa Almanac -- Friday, July 05, 2024
The Voice of Nancy Drew, more from the Iowa Almanac in a Moment. Eat up the summer with an Iowa Soybean Association Farmer Membership powered by the Soybean Checkup. Access timely industry info, engage in on-farm research, and join producer programs all designed to support your operations' unique needs. Activate or confirm your membership before August 31st and be entered to win one of many unique prizes, including a solo stove. Visit isoybeans.com today to learn more. The Iowa Soybean Association, driven to deliver for Iowa's nearly 37,000 Soybean Farmers. For many young women in the 1920s and 1930s, role models were somewhat hard to find. After all, women only had the right to vote for about a decade at the time. But a series of detective novels for young people featured a female character, Nancy Drew, who despite her young age, solved mystery after mystery. And despite her true identity being a secret for more than 50 years, the original author of the series was LaDora Iowa native Mildred Wert Benson, who was born Mildred Augustine on July 5th, 1905. A born writer at age 12, Millie sold her first story to St. Nicholas Magazine. She earned her journalism degree at the University of Iowa in 1925, and two years later was the first person to earn a master's degree in journalism there. In 1929, she received a slim outline of an idea for a book, and for $125 and no royalties, she wrote the first Nancy Drew novel, The Secret of the Old Clock. It was an immediate hit featuring a smart, curious, independent, and thoughtful character that soon became a role model for millions of girls. Millie wrote 22 of the first 25 Nancy Drew books in the 1930s and 1940s, and then wrote another in 1953. But all the while she kept her identity a secret. The author of all the books was listed as Carolyn Keene. She worked for newspapers in Toledo, Ohio from 1944 until her death in 2002, just short of her 97th birthday. In the last decade of her life, she was celebrated as the original author of the famous series, including being at the center of a national Nancy Drew conference at the University of Iowa. The woman who gave life to teenage detective Nancy Drew, Mildred Wert Benson, was born in LaDora. On this date, in 1905, and that's Iowa Almanac for July 5th, there's more online at IowaAlmanac.com. Until Monday, I'm Jeff Stein.