“Her most harrowing experiences were merely a few forced landings -- nothing to them. Even that moment early in her career, when the engine suddenly went dead while the plane was above downtown Canton, gave her no serious concern...” -- “Toledo Aviatrix Taught Fliers Around the Globe Their First ‘Steps’”, The Toledo Times, Mar. 19, 1945

journalism scrapbooks: browse artifacts

Although most well known as a novelist, Mildred Wirt Benson considered herself first and foremost a journalist. After graduating with a Master's in journalism from The University of Iowa, she worked briefly at The Clinton [Iowa] Herald and The Iowa City Press-Citizen before beginning a lifelong career at The Toledo Times (later The Toledo Blade) in 1944. She reflected on her experiences breaking into the business for a 2001 Blade column:

“It seems only yesterday that I applied for a newspaper job. After twice being turned down, I was hired, but I was told that after World War II ended there would be layoffs and I would be one of the first 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…" [5]

The scrapbooks digitized here document this period. Like many early female journalists, Benson was primarily given human interest assignments rather than hard news. For stories such as her series on nine-year-old leukemia patient Dickie Sloan, Benson's background in novel-writing served her well in dramatizing his situation and engaging readers' sympathies. But she quickly joined her male colleagues on the front page, as assignments to interview housewives and grocers about shortages on beef, butter and soap soon led to front-page articles on Toledo's post-war black market. For these investigative journalism pieces, Benson found herself seeking clues and compiling evidence much like her teen sleuth heroines.

These early newspaper writings were so successful that instead of being one of the first to be let go, Benson was retained far past the typical retirement age -- a situation that couldn’t have suited her better: “The thunder of the presses was always music to my ears… Going to work daily was a way of life for me and I had no other” [5].

On May 29, 2002, before a sudden illness prompted an emergency visit to the hospital, Benson spent the final day of her life as she had so many others: finishing up an assignment in the newsroom. In her obituary published the next day, Toledo Blade publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block offered the following tribute:

"Millie Benson was one of the greatest women writers and journalists of the 20th century. She was gutsy and daring, a living embodiment of her Nancy Drew heroine. She influenced generations of Blade reporters. I will never forget her." [6]