I wrote her a letter. I had no idea how ill she was; we were supposed to have dinner, and she kept sending word that she wasn’t up to it, so I thought I’d put my words on paper.
I didn’t know it would be the last thing I would ever be able to say to her.
“Dear Eppie,” it began–she was Eppie Lederer and Ann Landers both; they were the same person but they were separate people, Ann Landers was the face in the column logo, Eppie was the woman who actually sat down and wrote the words …
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Anyway, it began, “Dear Eppie,” and here are the words I meant for her alone to read, but words that this morning I think you should read, too:
“None of us in this business of writing newspaper columns will ever come close to achieving what you have achieved. It’s not just the number of readers you have–although that is unattainable enough for the rest of us. But your real achievement is your place in the hearts of your readers–how much they trust you and respect you and know that you are giving it to them directly and from your own heart. That’s not going to happen again in our business–you are the one who did that, and no one will ever do it again.”
For almost 50 years, she wrote seven days a week. No vacations; no days off. Think about that. You could go to the biggest cities in the United States, and the smallest towns, and there she would be. Editors, even in times of crunched news space, would not dare drop her column. Drop Ann Landers? An editor might as well close down his or her paper. She didn’t work for the editors of all those papers around the country–she worked for her readers. It was magic.
We went out to eat one night before she got sick–try walking down the street on your way to a restaurant with Ann Landers, take a look at the stares that come your way–and for almost three hours I sat across from her as if I were in a front row seat at the greatest concert in the world. The people she has known, the places she has visited … even as I type those words, it occurs to me that I am writing in the present tense, because the thought that she is gone just doesn’t register. Since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, she has been like the air itself, always there, a part of our world, taken on faith. The morning paper and Ann Landers.
She asked me to walk her home, and then she asked me to ride the elevator upstairs with her. The columnist with more readers than anyone else on the planet lived alone. So we went up there, to the gorgeous apartment overlooking Oak Street Beach, and she gave me a little tour.
There was a double wall just full of framed photographs. Eppie with presidents of the United States, Eppie with Michael Jordan, Eppie with Nelson Mandela, Eppie with Walter Cronkite. The thing about the photographs was that all those people gravitated to her, she didn’t gravitate to them. They wanted to meet Ann Landers.
I was in her office the other morning–I asked the ladies who work for her how she was doing, I was still unaware of how ill she was–and her daughter, Margo, was on the phone from the East Coast. One of Eppie’s assistants said that Margo wanted to talk to me.
“So,” Margo said, “hanging around the Landers office, are you?”
I said that I was checking to see when her mom might be feeling well enough to go out to dinner again. I asked her daughter: How is your mom doing?
“Mom’s getting old,” Margo said, which should have told me something.
Eppie had done me a kindness recently–she’s been doing me kindnesses for my whole newspaper life–and here is how I ended my letter to her:
“Your thoughtfulness toward me for so many years is something I have no idea how to repay. So I’ll just do so with my friendship and unending admiration, hoping that will come close to being enough. I look forward to seeing you as soon as you feel like having company.”
She’s the one who kept us company, for all these years. That smiling, knowing face staring off the newsprint, in every city. What a newspaperwoman. What a success story. What a friend.