Rienow, Leona Train

Leona Train Rienow was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1903, but moved when she was one year old to the mining site of Chisholm, Minnesota. She received a B.A. from the University of Chicago and her Master's from the University of Minnesota. In 1931, she married Robert Rienow while he was attending West Point. She toured Europe in 1948 and Italy in 1953. She also traveled on a tramp freighter around the Mediterranean visiting Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, and Damascus. Her interests included birds and bird-watching, baking, camping, canoeing, touring, forestry, the environment, politics, photography, roses, cats, prehistory, and the Middle Ages. Leona Train Rienow authored books, most of which were for children, short stories, and articles. Her books included The Bewitched Caverns (1948), The Dark Pool (1949), The Year of the Last Eagle (1970), and Unbottled Scotch (1987). She also co-authored a number of books with her husband including Our New Life with the Atom (1959), Of Snuff, Sin and the Senate (1965), The Lonely Quest: the Evolution of Presidential Leadership (1966), Moment in the Sun: a Report on the Deteriorating Quality of the American Environment (1967), Man Against His Environment (1970), and The Great Unwanteds Want Us: Illegal Aliens-too late to close the gates? (1980). Leona Train Rienow died of a stroke in 1983 at Child's Hospital in Albany, New York. She was eighty years old.