Happy 120th to Mildred Wirt Benson & a Huge Debt of Gratitude to Geoffrey S. Lapin

Happy 120th to Mildred Wirt Benson!!

Her 120th birthday since her birth would have been on July 10, 2025, though she passed away at the ripe age of 96 in May of 2002. Several of my good friends in Nancy Drew and I wanted to visit the legendary Geoffrey S. Lapin, the man who discovered Millie was Carolyn Keene and other famous pseudonyms back in the 1960s. We even celebrated with a few cupcakes and special cupcake toppers.

My friend Mary and I were able to make a quick trip up to the Toledo Public Library to donate some wonderful items that Geoff reached out to me about wanting to go to Toledo - including his beautiful 1939 Nancy Drew Reporter movie poster. The library will be framing it to hang in my Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection room. Geoff also donated the desk contents of Millie’s from The Toledo Blade when she passed which included a lot of notes, notebooks and letters and cards from fans and even schools some of which are pictured below in this blog.

There was an article someone wrote and sent her, pages from The Cool One. An unpublished radio transcript. Most of an outline for the Penny Parker book, Hoofbeats on the Turnpike. Plus, a child reader with a short story first published in St. Nicholas and some bound volumes of St. Nicholas with her short stories in them. They will be invaluable for researchers and fans who visit the Toledo Public Library and will add to and enhance the collection they have there. Geoff even made it official by signing the paperwork to donate his research, articles, signed books and other ephemera related to Mildred Wirt Benson to the University of Iowa Women's Archive to join the papers and collections of Mildred Wirt Benson and Carolyn Stewart Dyer. What an amazing gift and honor!

Many thanks to Geoff for his generous gifts to the library so that fans and researchers can learn so much and learn about his journey to discovering Millie and all the work he did to get Millie recognition for being such a great writer and the woman behind a lot of famous pseudonyms!