The Ladora, Iowa, native who brought Nancy Drew to life has died. Mildred Benson may’ve been the oldest working journalist in America. She was at her job as a newspaper columnist in Ohio Tuesday when she became ill and later died at a hospital — at age 96. Benson graduated from the University of Iowa in 1925, where journalism professor Carolyn Dyer organized a conference in Benson’s honor in the mid-1990s. She says Benson went into the newsroom in World War Two and it took her three times before she got a job in the male-dominated business. Benson worked as a journalist for 58 years and wrote more than 130 books, including the Penny Parker mystery series. Under the pen name Carolyn Keene, Benson wrote 23 of the original 30 Nancy Drew mysteries. She was paid 125-dollars each and -no- royalties for the Nancy Drew books, which have sold 200-million copies in 17 languages. Dyer says Benson was -not- concerned about the money, but the recognition.Dyer says Benson had told a reporter at the Iowa City conference she loved to write, it’s all she ever wanted to do and “I’ll be writing when the undertaker comes to take me out the door.”
