Forever, Erma

by Erma Bombeck

  Erma Bombeck was a model of family. She was the adoring mother of successful children, proud wife of an educator, loving daughter of a mother who inspired her.

  And finally, Erma Bombeck was a model of the American dream. She was an Ohio homemaker who rose out of utter obscurity to the pinnacles of fame and fortune, without ever losing respect for her humble roots.

  The finest tribute to Erma Bombeck is that millions “knew” her almost as a next-door neighbor or favorite aunt, but had only met her through her columns and books.

  Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe, April 25, 1996

  It was 1970, and I was a twenty-something reporter in a rented car looking for a hill in Bellbrook, Ohio. My editor had sent me out to interview Erma Bombeck, this housewife-humorist, this anti-Heloise, this funny lady of the home pages.

  The forty-something Bombeck had given me these directions: “You head for Ohio and turn left. You take another left at the traffic light. You go down the road until you come to mailbox 3875, only the 7 is missing. Then go to the top of the hill.”

  A New Englander looking for a hill in Ohio, I passed the RFD mailbox three times before I figured it out and turned up the five-degree incline to the rambling white farmhouse. There at the top—the top?—was a pond with large ducks and two dogs named Kate and Harry.

  These were the first words that Erma Bombeck said to me: “Come in, come in. Harry, you stay out there, you’ve got bad breath. Please don’t look at the mess, they’re tearing apart the kitchen and there’s this brown dust that settles every day all over the house. You must be hungry, but the hamburger is absolutely refusing to defrost. Take your coat off.”

  It was vintage Erma Bombeck, the same in person and in print. She was the mistress of controlled chaos, the head of the house of absurdity. She was a warm and generous woman whose body gave out so much sooner than her spirit.

  On that distant March day, over bologna sandwiches and Bugles, over coffee from a percolator that sounded like John Henry’s sledgehammer, she talked about mothering and loneliness, about deadline humor and deadly seriousness.

  It was the height of the Vietnam War, and some reporter had asked how she was going to observe the day of protest. “I told them I had three weeks of laundry I was going to do.” Now she worried. “Am I just sitting here writing a funny column while Rome burns?”

  It was the beginning, too, of the women’s movement and she said, “I had a member of the Women’s Liberation Movement write to me and say, Lady, you are the problem.”

  Erma Bombeck, the problem? I wonder now if that young feminist thought, after the revolution, that washing machines would stop eating socks as a gesture of solidarity? Or that husbands should stop watching football?

  Erma Fiste, daughter of a teenage mother, was a reporter in the 1950s when newspaper women were few and far between. Later she would write that as a young mother at home in suburbia with three children, “I hid my dreams in the back of my mind—it was the only safe place in the house. From time to time I would get them out and play with them, not daring to reveal them to anyone else because they were fragile and might get broken.”

  She began to work again from home in 1964, just one year after Betty Friedan’s book was criticized as the ranting of a neurotic and probably frigid woman. Bombeck’s column was pegged, or dismissed, as “housewife humor.” But it was, in its own way, wonderfully, deliciously subversive.

  When she started, suburban housewives were still pictured vacuuming in high heels in immaculate homes with perfect children. Erma Bombeck cracked open the feminine mystique her own way: with a sidesplitting laugh.

  Her crack was a thousand wisecracks. Over the years, she wrote the truth about domestic life in all its madness and frustration, its car pools and appliances. She wrote with the uncanny accuracy of a fellow traveler and a born reporter. She wrote to and about women who were, in the name of her column, “At Wit’s End.”

  This mother never signed on to the infamous mommy wars that pitted women at home against those in the workplace. How could she? She had done it all, and so she wrote for us all.

  In the late 1970s, she went on the road to sell the Equal Rights Amendment in tandem with the redoubtable Liz Carpenter. “We did the razorback hog call in Arkansas. We sang Baptist hymns in a mobile home cruising through Iowa,” she reminisced, “and Liz auctioned off my husband’s underwear in Phoenix.”

  Later, this woman turned her heart and pen to children with cancer. She also shared those parts of her life that were not a laugh riot: her experience with infertility, her miscarriage, her breast cancer, the last fatal deterioration of her kidneys.

  And whenever “family values” returned with grim seriousness, Erma Bombeck, wife of one, mother of three, was around to remind us about “Family, the Ties That Bind and Gag.”

  A lot of columnists write words to end up in the Congressional Record or on the president’s desk or at the Pulitzer Committee’s door. But Erma Bombeck went us all one better. Her words won her the permanent place of honor in American life: the refrigerator door. Now we are again at wit’s end.

  Helen Gurley Brown, Editor, Cosmopolitan, from a letter to the family

  ....She interested me in one way because of being such a celebrated and successful journalist, the best there ever was and she had lots of dealings with other famous journalists. Art Buchwald, etc. At the same time she was wife, mother, human creature who never took it all very big. She took it seriously but never big....

  Pat McMahon, talk show host, KTAR-radio, Phoenix; from his tribute at the memorial service.

  I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve had very few regrets in my life, but I remember when I was a kid I would think with a certain amount of anxiety that it would have been nice to be able to sit by the Mississippi with Mark Twain. I later thought, wow, what it would have been like to be back during Will Rogers’s time and to be able to appreciate that level of humor! And then Erma became my friend, and I didn’t think about that so much anymore.

  Tom Cecil, Dayton, from his book, I Want My Turn in the Shower

  Bombeck fans are somewhat addicted and maybe even a little fanatical. Loving Erma is somewhat like admiring motherhood, the American flag and apple pie. We let our hero go with great reluctance.

  But her legacy of humor will live on and be enjoyed by readers not yet born. Her style of writing will be taught in journalism and writing classes in colleges across the country. And we, her fans, will read and reread her books and columns, and they’ll delight us as much as when they were first published.

  This, indeed, is the end of an era. We’ll miss you, Erma.

  Marilyn Potts, from a letter to the family

  I have lost one of my best friends!

  I’ve never cried over the deaths of any celebrity in my 71 years (with the exception of JFK).

  But I am crying tonight.

  I have laughed until I cried over hundreds of her columns—they have been about me, my husband and my children! The first time I ever read her—it was about her husband’s idea of a great night out, going to the grand opening of a K-Mart. I think I almost died laughing, and so did my husband—he recognized himself!

  One column she wrote—I didn’t laugh. I cried my eyes out. It was about the mothers of handicapped children, whom she felt were God’s saints on earth. Well, I’m no saint, but I wrote her about this subject, as I had two, who have both since died. She answered my letter and said if I didn’t mind, she would include parts of my letter in a follow-up column, and she did! I still have that letter and the two columns tucked away among my mementos.

  What a wonderful mind. I stand in awe of the joy and laughter she has brought into so many lives—especially mine!

  Aaron Priest, Erma’s agent, from his tribute at the memorial service

  Over the years I watched Erma. I watched Erma with number-one bestsellers. I watched Erma with literally crowds of people. I watched the adoration in people’s faces. And I noticed certain things. Erma didn’t cha
nge. People used to say to me, “Is Erma really as nice as she appears in her books, on television?” And I said, “Well, actually she’s nicer.”

  Erma is the only person I have ever met who literally you couldn’t buy. If Erma didn’t want to do something, there was not enough money in the world to make her do it. And Lord knows, enough times people wanted her.

  They wanted her to endorse products. They wanted her to do this; they wanted her to do that. I remember telling someone one day, if you filled a room with gold bars it wouldn’t make any difference.

  On the other hand, there were things Erma wanted to do and money had nothing to do with them. Erma wanted to do something for children with cancer. And she went to the camps and she made these kids laugh and she wrote a book and with the proceeds of the book she started a foundation for research for children with cancer and it was set up in Atlanta with the American Cancer Society.

  And during the last four or five years, when she had more than her share of adversity, she exhibited more courage than any person I have ever seen. I remember all of the things that I saw her do in the kitchen—and she whipped up some great meals over the years—six weeks ago we sat there and talked, and she said she wanted a lemon. A few weeks before that Erma had fallen and dislocated her shoulder. Her arm was in a sling and she couldn’t raise it. I watched her take her hand out, put the knife in her hand, move back and forth against the counter. I knew enough not to offer to help. She turned to me, made a remark about cutting the lemon, and sat down to eat it.

  By D.L. Stewart, Dayton Daily News, April 23, 1996

  The phone keeps ringing.

  Every few minutes there’s another call from another news organization wanting to know about Erma Bombeck. A network looking for a few seconds of reaction to her death. A local TV station looking for a two-line insight about the life of a woman who brought smiles and wisdom to millions of readers for as long as most of us can remember.

  “What kind of a person was she?” they keep asking.

  How do you detail a person’s life in a sound bite? How do you do justice to a woman who became America’s mom? Will they understand if I tell them about American Airlines Flight 311 from Dayton to Dallas?

  In February 1977, Erma Bombeck already was a celebrity. Syndicated in 601 newspapers. A best-selling author. Nationally known. I was in my second year as a local columnist. Barely known in Beavercreek.

  We had met just once before, five months earlier, when I interviewed her for a profile about the hometown columnist who had made good. There was no reason to believe she would remember me when we happened to wind up on the same flight to Dallas. She did, though, and we boarded the plane together. But she was first class, while I was not.

  “C’mon back and join me after we take off,” I joked.

  “Are you kidding?” She laughed. “I’m not going back there with the little people.”

  So I said good-bye and found my seat in coach and the plane took off. Eventually the captain turned off the seat belt sign. A few seconds later, Erma Bombeck gave up her first-class seat and slid into the coach seat next to me. We laughed all the way to Dallas.

  Maybe that’s not enough to sum up a person’s life. But perhaps it is....

  Now the phones keep ringing and the news organizations are asking about the real Erma Bombeck, and I keep feeling that I should find something more significant to talk about than a flight from Dayton to Dallas. That maybe I should talk about the tragedy and the sorrow of her death. Or about how, when I get this column finished, I am going to walk out of this office and, sometime before this day is over, I am going to break down and cry over the loss of an inspiration and a friend. But I think Erma would have hated that. So, for now at least, I’ll just hold onto the memory of American Airlines Flight 311. And about what it was like to fly with a first-class lady.

  By Mary McCarty, Dayton Daily News, April 25, 1996

  My mother raised a glass Monday night to her old college classmate, Erma Fiste: “May she find all those mismatched socks in heaven.” It’s easy to imagine similar toasts being made all over America, all over the world. But especially, all over Dayton. Never mind that she was one of the most famous Daytonians ever, one of the most well-known women in the world. She was one of us, and she steadfastly refused to be anything else.

  Erma Bombeck was, for Daytonians, quite literally the mom next door. So many of us knew her, knew people who knew her, encountered her unflagging good cheer at a book signing or a public appearance. Everyone else felt as if they knew her.

  My mother studied journalism with Erma at the University of Dayton; studied her ABCs with her husband, Bill, at St. Anthony Grade School. Even then, Erma was more than just another eager face in Lou Riepenhoff’s journalism class. Erma’s wit was already famous in her circle; her stories entertained the other girls in the women’s lounge at UD.

  I met her just once, at a book signing at the old Town and Country shopping center. I was a timid ninth-grader, determined to get my book signed in time for Mother’s Day. At last it was my turn. I had never met a famous person before, and I was scared. “I think you know my mother,” I stammered. “Vera Seiler.”

  She laughed heartily, exchanged knowing glances with another former classmate farther back in line. “Of course, we remember Vera!”

  She signed Mom’s book, Vera, I met your daughter. You done good. But I think I expected greatness from you! I puzzled over that inscription a bit. Did she mean literary greatness, or did she somehow divine my inherent mediocrity? Still, I was pleased with my first celebrity encounter. She was kind, like my mother. Old, like my mother. Not scary at all.

  My mother never expressed one whit of jealousy over her old classmate’s success. “I just always enjoyed her so much,” she says. “She related to the American housewife. In every column, we could see ourselves.”

  There were days when only Erma could make my mother laugh. Days when she might have made good her threat to move to the funny farm were it not for Erma’s redeeming humor. Her columns made light of a mother’s frustrations and failures at the same time they elevated her role.

  Over the years, my mother kept tabs on Erma through mutual friends. The refrain was always the same: She never changed. Success never changed her.

  She was, in fact, continually surprised by her success, humbled when she read the work of other columnists. She often told her close friend Marianna Cochran of Beavercreek, “I was just in the right place at the right time.”

  When Cochran asked how she could continue to work when she was so sick, Erma simply said, “It’s what I do.”

  Friends say she never tried to use her wealth or fame to hasten her kidney transplant. She didn’t become one of those celebrities whose names mysteriously float to the head of the donor list. She waited her turn.

  She was kind to stammering children, true blue to her early friends, gracious with even the most mutton-headed fans. Cochran recalls the book signings for Motherhood: The Second-Oldest Profession. “Believe it or not, people asked her, ‘What was the oldest profession?’ ”

  She found poetry in pantyhose, humor in mismatched socks, and friends all over the globe.

  Doesn’t it just figure she’s from our hometown?

  Father Tom Walsh, from a letter to the family

  I saw Erma visiting the celestial library, checking out the religion section. There next to the Koran, the Bible, the Analects of Confucius, the Tao Te Ching of Lao-tzu, the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism, there next to all those classics are all of Erma’s books....I will be waiting for her next book on the Internet, Having a Helluva Good Time in Heaven.

  Betsy Bombeck, Erma’s daughter

  I have often been asked what it’s like to have Erma Bombeck for a mother. I’d always tell people, “She is my mother—and we all know how mothers can be,” Now the question is what it’s like to live without her, although in many ways she surrounds me.

  Many of my friends lived with her clippings on their refrigerators, and I
’d joke that my refrigerator was the only Bombeck-free zone in America. But her pictures are in my home and office, pictures with that big smile and our family all around. You couldn’t miss how she brightened up a room. I will miss her energy. That presence that drew you toward her, that emanated from her and out to everyone. It was in her eyes, her hands, her laugh, her touch. It was infectious.

  Her presence was so much greater than the five-foot-two she stood. I loved to put my hand in her small hands, the hands that could make those typewriter keys fly. From my mom I learned to laugh at myself and give much to others. Live each day to its fullest, so that when you go to bed you know you’ve done it all.

  She challenges me to carry on her spirit of dignity, grace, courage, humor, love for others and most especially for family and God. In that way she never really dies—she continues to live.

  Andy Bombeck, from his remarks at the memorial service

  One thing that my mom was so adamant about was not to take yourself too seriously. Now people are telling me, “You don’t take anything seriously,” so I have to find the happy medium.

  But I can tell you one story. I’m a fourth grade teacher. Last year I was trying to teach the kids how to write, and I told them I have two writers in my family so maybe I know something about it. (I’m not sure I agree with that.) I said there is a process to writing, and my mom would back that up.

  Now I don’t know whether she used the writing process, but I went home and talked to my mom and said, “This is what you have to tell them. Go in there and tell them that you use the writing process even if you don’t.”

  The morning she came to visit, I told my class, “Don’t ask any embarrassing questions. Don’t ask about me. Don’t embarrass me and don’t embarrass her.” When she showed up, the first thing she said was, “What do you want to know about your teacher?” She didn’t tell them anything about writing. It was all about my childhood and what I did in school....