Virginia S Eifert

Virginia S. Eifert may have lived her entire life in Springfield,Illinois, but her passions took her much farther, traveling and learning about North America's natural and human history on a much broader scale. Born in 1911, she was ill through much of high school and never attained a high school diploma. Instead, she began journaling, learning nature on an intimate level, then developing a 'nature news' publication that she distributed around her neighborhood. Soon she was asked to write in this same style for one of the largest newspapers in Illinois, and by the time she was 19 she was asked to create, write, illustrate and edit a monthly magazine for the Illinois State Museum. She continued with this effort for 326 issues until 1966 and her early death at age 55. It seemed Virginia knew she had little time, and let none of it pass quietly. At the museum she also published a series of natural history booklets and wrote for many nationally distributed nature magazines such as Audubon and Nature.

In 1954, she published her first major book for a New York publisher, Dodd Mead, and went on to write 19 more, winning several national awards in the process.

Good creativity is a collaborative effort, and her husband, Herman, who had a masters in English and Ecology, became her built-in proof reader. It seemed she was the wild and untamed nature spirit while he worked to shape her words into readable form. It was a good partnership, but not without friction on both sides. Herman was also Education Curator at the Illinois State Museum, and the two found common ground and inspiration there. It was a rarefied situation that their only son, Larry, found himself in, with friends like Rachel Carson, Edwin Way Teale and many other nature-loving professionals of the times, and it was no wonder Larry Eifert has become a nature painter of some skill - how could he not in such a family.

To learn more about Virginia, go to Virginia.larryeifert.com.