Aileen Fisher - Life

Life

Aileen was born September 9, 1906 in Iron River, on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to Nelson E. and Lucia (Milker) Fisher. Her father was a homesteader who established several businesses in the area; her mother had been a kindergarten teacher. When she was small, poor health caused her father to retire to forty acres on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he built a home called High Banks. She and her brother, Leslie Paul, spent much of their time playing in the nearby river, walking country roads, and taking care of their farm animals. On Aileen's eighth birthday her baby sister, Lucia, arrived; considering her a birthday present, Aileen soon began taking care of her. Another sister, Beth, was born six years later.

Fisher attended the University of Chicago for two years, then transferred to the University of Missouri in order to obtain a BA in journalism in 1927. After graduating she took a summer job in a small theater, then returned to Chicago. She working as an assistant in a placement bureau for women journalists, then as the director for the Women's National Journalistic Register.

In 1933, wanting to live someplace that had beautiful scenery, a good library and an "invigorating climate", she moved with attorney and fellow-writer Olive Rabe to Boulder, Colorado. Five years later they bought a 200-acre ranch in Sunshine Canyon, at the foot of Flagstaff Mountain. They lived there, totally off the grid, for thirty years. An active woman who loved the outdoors, she and Olive designed and built the cabin on their ranch. As Fisher explained in 1948, “We bought the ranch, built a cabin, got a dog — and now we don’t care if we ever leave Boulder county”. Her other interests included reading, woodworking, hiking and mountain climbing. Aileen Fisher died at the age of 96 at her home in Boulder, Colorado. Her papers are held in libraries at Southern Mississippi University and Stanford University.