Forever, Erma

by Erma Bombeck

I lost a dear friend yesterday. Her name was Erma Bombeck. And over the years she made people laugh and think through her columns and books and on television.

  She died because of complications from a kidney transplant that somehow failed. But possibly the real reason was that Erma waited a very, very long time for a kidney. She refused to “jump the line” to get one before her turn. That tells you most of what you need to know about her.

  Erma was such a wonderful friend and her humor transcended what she did for a living. When we got on the phone we made fun of everything. Erma hated phonies of all kinds, and you could tell this from her writing. She knew that 95 percent of the awards she received were because the organization wanted a free speaker. She loved the people who loved her column and had no use for editors who cut it to squeeze in a snow shovel ad.

  One of my favorite stories about Erma was when she was invited to a dinner at Dinah Shore’s house and Dinah sat her next to Cary Grant. Cary knew Erma’s column and Erma was walking on air. On the way back to the hotel I accused Erma of putting her room key under Cary’s plate. Instead of denying it, she answered mischievously, “So what?”

  We corresponded regularly over the years through an organization called “The American Academy of Humor Columnists.” It was pure invention and lacked any hint of legitimacy beyond the name. Several of us, including Russell Baker, Calvin Trillin, Art Hoppe and Andy Rooney, felt that since every profession has an academy, we should have one as well. We never had a meeting, but the mail among members—who came to include Dave Barry and Mark Russell—was enormous. And all of it non-PC and irreverent.

  We told Erma she was the only woman being considered for membership, but before accepting her we asked her to write a letter outlining the contribution she could make. She replied that she was the best coffee maker in the world and would be great at cleaning up after the meeting. As a woman, she promised she would never speak if a male member of the academy wished to speak first, and while she made more money than the rest of us, she offered to dress down whenever we got together.

  When a friend passes away, there are certain things you remember vividly. The thing I remember most about Erma is her laugh—it had a wonderful, joyful ring. She loved to laugh, and laugh a lot. Even when she didn’t think something was funny, she pretended, just so you wouldn’t feel so bad.

  Erma’s gift to the country was a gift of humor. Her columns invited people in. The only person she ever made fun of was herself. She met readers where they live—their tract houses, their car pools, their kids’ band concerts and PTA meetings. Her columns struck a chord. I bet they were clipped from the paper and stuck to more refrigerator doors than those of any other columnist in history.

  Toward the end, she even found humor in illness, laughing, I imagine, even when she didn’t really think it was funny.

  No other person could do it in quite the way she did.

  I am also certain she would not appreciate an appreciation. She would prefer we all send money to the Kidney Foundation. She and I talked about how we wanted to be remembered by the media after we were gone. Erma said, “Why can’t my work stand by itself?”

  It will, Erma. It will.

  The Most Reverend Thomas J. O’Brien, Bishop of Phoenix, Celebrant at the Funeral Mass, April 29, 1996

  If there was ever a person who I would like to have return from the dead, I suppose it would be Erma. God knows what she would write about—and I don’t know if God would be happy with that either.

  Maria Adelman, from a letter to the family

  I admired Erma for her ability to tune in on all aspects of life so acutely and communicate her thoughts and feelings so well, with such a profound impact on so many people’s lives. She had an uncanny ability to make such great laughter. She made me feel so much less alone. She inspired people to have greater strength, endurance, awareness, sensitivity and, most importantly, a sense of humanity which I find missing in so many people today. She inspired determination to pursue what you truly believe in and perseverance in spite of all life’s obstacles.

  We must all keep in mind that when a loved one has passed away, they will return in our dreams to comfort us, and wonderful memories of Erma will live on in our minds for sure, especially as we read and reread all her great works and well put words. Erma’s talent, intelligence, and wit can be matched by no one. Now, we’ll all have to work a little harder to poke fun at ourselves and look for the humor in life to keep us going during difficult times, perhaps trying to imagine what Erma would have said about things. I intend to catch up on reading every one of Erma’s books. I hope I can look forward to perhaps seeing all her columns published into volumes of books some day, and maybe seeing a movie or documentary of her life story.

  Robert A. Kelly, from a letter to the family

  I am only one of the many readers that loved Erma and were touched by her columns. I wish I knew her better because she was one of God’s better creations.

  Erma wrote a column many many years ago that had to do with God giving a mother a handicapped child. As it happens, our daughter recovered from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1977, and it left her with mental and physical handicaps. Whenever I reread that column, I get tears in my eyes and a big lump in my throat because it was so touching.

  There will never be another Erma Bombeck, nor will there be another Michelangelo or a Rembrandt. I would be joyful just to know that I had shared the life of someone like that. God has blessed you greatly.

  By Liz Carpenter, Austin American-Statesman, April 23, 1996

  Erma Bombeck’s laughter will always ring out for me from a hundred places where we traveled together for more than five years fighting to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed. We lost (for now) but what a great trouper she was for the cause.

  She would recite the proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution—“Equality of rights under the law should not be denied or abridged on account of sex”—and then add with a grin, “Look, ladies, those 16 little words simply mean one size fits all.”

  We traveled every weekend to one or several of the 16 states yet to ratify the amendment and called on governors and legislators. We went by bus, motor home, plane and, occasionally, by foot and on bended knees. Once in Florida as we boarded a “see through” helicopter, Erma leaned over and whispered, “I wish we’d worn better underwear.”

  In Little Rock, Arkansas, after a long day of speeches, we headed by car through a rainstorm to a late dinner. As we searched for the designated landmark—a red mailbox—I rolled the window down and stuck my head into the driving rain. “Watch those two-dollar permanents,” Erma yelled. “They frizz.”

  Around the fire at our host’s home, I asked the group assembled, “Why do we do this? After all, Erma, you could be playing tennis in Scottsdale.”

  She replied, “Because when my children ask me, ‘What did you do in the war for the equality of women, Mom?’ I don’t want to have to say, ‘I gave at the office.’ ”

  What an asset she was. Women poured out to see her and cheer her—white-collar and blue-collar women who knew her through her columns because she shared the problems of dishwashers and clothes dryers. When we found ourselves short of money, she was there to auction off anything in sight—including her husband’s socks and boxers.

  Erma and I became such allies that our friendship took us on a Greek vacation. At a restaurant, I’ll never forget the look on her face when the waiter brought her a stack of dishes to toss and break in the custom of the country. With each shattering sound, Erma cast eyes to heaven and exclaimed, “God forgive me.”

  Erma was a practicing friend. I had written a piece for Texas Monthly called “The Silver Lining” which I sent to her. She called to say, “That’s a book, Liz. I’m calling my agent, Aaron Priest.” In two days he was in Austin demanding an outline, and in another month he had auctioned the book for the most money I ever made at one time.

  The last time I saw her, she had invited me to Phoenix to speak at a luncheon to ra
ise money for her favorite cause, the Arizona Kidney Foundation. She came to the event despite her growing health problems. When she walked in with her mother, her husband and family, the room of more than 1,000 people stood and cheered.

  The last few years, Erma has kept laughing and writing despite a run of bad luck: a mastectomy that prevented her from getting a kidney several years ago, a fall on her shoulder recently, and the long wait for the phone call telling her that a kidney was available. For someone who gave so much laughter, it doesn’t seem fair that so many bad things could happen to a person so kind and good.

  Erma was with me a few days after I became a substitute mother at 70. She looked at me in astonishment and said, “Liz, don’t you know teenagers are hazardous to your health? If it is adventure you want, why don’t you go to Mt. Rushmore, attach a bungee cord to Lincoln’s wart and jump.”

  That’s the way she faced whatever life handed her, and I suspect, knowing her deep faith in God, she is at peace with this Last Great Adventure.

  Farewell, my friend.

  The Catholic Sun, editorial, May 2, 1996

  Erma Bombeck made people laugh. Never in a mean-spirited way. Never resorting to crudeness or profanity. She had us laugh by allowing us to look at the lighter side of everyday life and seeing it’s not as bad as we thought it was

  That’s the public side of Erma, the side printed in hundreds of newspapers across the country. We all got to know Erma Bombeck through her columns and books.

  On the more private side, when she was struck by kidney illness five years ago, Erma got on the waiting list for a kidney, and, just like everyone else, she waited. At first she kept her illness private, but when the news leaked out, she became a public advocate for the cause of all those seriously ill. Even in her difficult times, she helped others and cheered them on.

  While conventional wisdom these days says that celebrities like Larry Hagman or Mickey Mantle get pushed to the top of the list, Erma’s case proved what organ donor organizations have been saying all along: the system is fair; there is no favoritism.

  Erma’s turn came, finally, just a few weeks ago, but it was not soon enough. There is, tragically, a nationwide shortage of organs to be donated. For many people like Erma Bombeck, the body can’t keep fighting long enough to wait for an organ to become available because not enough people have signed up to donate their organs upon their death. A critical shortage of organs exists, according to the executive director of the United Network for Organ Sharing. Approximately 45,000 people are waiting for organ transplants. More than 3,400 died last year while waiting for a suitable organ. But you can help change that.

  If something Erma wrote ever made you laugh, or cry, or think, you can repay her in some small way for the way she touched your life. You can commit today to become an organ donor.

  Erma Bombeck gave us the gift of laughter. We can give others the gift of life—so that they too can live and love and laugh. Sign up today.

  By Kevin Cuneo, Erie (PA) Times, April 25, 1996

  I suspect that Bombeck’s column, At Wit’s End, which has appeared in our newspaper since the late 1960s, was an acquired taste for some men. It was for me. Her stories about family life, including toddler mishaps, surly teenagers and adventures at the supermarket, seemed stupendously mundane to a know-it-all kid fresh out of college.

  Fortunately, an assignment in the spring of 1977, I think it was, to cover a local appearance by Bombeck helped open my eyes. She turned out to be a person of great warmth, insight and humor.

  It took about thirty seconds for Bombeck to size me up. “Let me guess,” she said. “Rather than covering my visit tonight, you’d rather be out exposing crooked politicians and all the vast corruption in Erie.” She said this with a smile. Was it that obvious?...

  Newspaper columns, however insightful or enjoyable, are but temporary delights. As much as you like the best of columnists, their prose is disposable. And once the writer is gone, their work is generally forgotten as well.

  Sad as it seems, that may eventually be Erma Bombeck’s fate. Except, that is, for one column she wrote for Mother’s Day a few years ago. It’s entitled No More Oatmeal Cookie Kisses, and it cuts right to the heart of every mother who’s ever dreamed of the day when the kids are finally all grown up and out of the house. My wife gets about halfway through the column every time before the tears start welling up and the sobbing begins. I, on the other hand, never read it because a grown man should not be seen crying in public.

  I told you this woman could write.

  Betty Cohen, from a letter to the family

  Erma Bombeck will be sorely missed by legions of people and for many reasons.

  My special reason is that when she wrote I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Go to Boise and subsequently appeared on the Phil Donahue Show with children who had survived cancer, my grandson, Aaron Alvidrez, was among those children, the only boy in the group. He thinks Erma was the absolute “greatest”—and she was.

  I can’t write any words that will make you feel better but you can take solace in the fact that God has another lovely angel in heaven and she will make all of them laugh.

  Lynn Colwell, from a letter to the family

  I don’t know whether you remember meeting me. I’m the person who wrote the book for young people about Erma.

  Erma made a stronger impression on me than anyone I’ve ever met outside of my family and several lifelong friends. She was everything I aspired to be.

  Erma not only made me laugh, she gave me guidance and support. The few hours I spent with her changed my life in terms of how I thought about myself. There are two things that I found extraordinary about her. First, that with all her success, she didn’t seem to have one iota of ego and second, that writing was work for her, just as it is for me.

  Phil Donahue, from his tribute at the memorial service

  In 1961 in Centerville, Ohio, on Cushwa Drive, I lived diagonally across the street from the Bombecks. We were all thirtysomething and were making about $15,000 a year, and after you paid the pediatrician you still had a little walking-around money. We all had stairstep kids, and most of us were Catholic. And the most fun that was to be had on Cushwa Drive in Centerville—where, incidentally, there are some places where the grass is greener than at other places—the most fun you could have was at the Bombecks. Erma would not let you fail. No matter what the joke may have been, she was the most generous audience—then and now and forever.

  She was working for the Kettering-Oakwood Times—if you can call an occasional column working. We would entertain each other in our homes. We all had the same house. It was a plat house—$15,500—three bedrooms, two bathrooms and the fireplace was $700 extra.

  Everybody had Early American decor. I had an American eagle from Sears over the fireplace—not brass, black (they were cheaper). The Bombecks had beams in the ceiling. I mean real wood Early American beams, perfectly mitered. You kept looking for Martha Washington. Bill Bombeck made those beams all by himself. I envied those beams so much. It explains why my relationship with Bill throughout my adult life has been so difficult.

  The spirit of those times has lived in the work of Erma Bombeck ever since 1961, and that is a remarkable thing when you realize what’s happened to us since then. We were everything our parents prayed that we would be, our parents sacrificed for us, and by 1961 we had achieved more than they had ever dreamed. We were making more money than they had ever made. And then somebody killed our president and we lost a war and the Japanese took over automotive engineering and a president resigned in disgrace and we looked up to discover that we were prepared for a world that never materialized. But while cities were burning and all this was happening to us, there was one constant in our culture and it was Erma Bombeck. Her spirit never flagged. Her humor never waned. Her light shone out from millions of refrigerator doors, just one of the many venues Erma found herself in, and allowed her work to reach the hearts of countless readers around the world.

&n
bsp; She became a historic figure of publishing and newspapering. It is not so much that she was the best; she was the only. There is no other time when the phrase is more appropriate to say than now: We shall never see her likes again. We shall never know again her brilliance, her insight, and especially her generosity. She is the modern Catholic woman. She is the married-once, faithful wife, who got more fun out of writing about infidelity than would be approved by the early Church, and she was without pretense. She was real and she brought us all down to earth—gently generously, and with brilliant humor. She is a twentieth-century political figure, and when the scholars gather hundreds of years from now to learn about us, they can’t know it all if they don’t read Erma.

  For all these reasons, I feel so blessed to have known this woman who made me a better person—not an easy task. I am so, so, grateful to her. I join you in mourning her passing, but she will live. She will live forever.

  By Pat Murphy, Tribune Newspapers (Arizona), April 24, 1996

  Erma Bombeck made us love her because of her willingness to poke fun at herself, to expose her personal sense of insecurity....But there was more to Erma Bombeck and her infectious wit, some thing deeper about her character that makes her unforgettable....

  Erma Bombeck was a model of charity. She endorsed and supported every good cause, speaking in behalf of it, sharing her resources.

  Erma Bombeck was a model of humility. She was a Phoenix homemaker shopping in our neighborhood supermarkets, never dressing or acting with pretense, pausing to laugh with an admiring stranger in the canned vegetable aisle, never ducking a fan wanting to shake her hand, always finding time to dash off a handwritten note.