In 1987, the woman who was “Ann Landers” left the Sun-Times, the home for her popular advice column for more than three decades, and came to work at the Tribune. The paper’s star columnist, Mike Royko, who had made a similar move three years before, was happy to have her. As he said, “I’m glad she’s here. Now, all those wackos who’ve been writing to me with their problems can write to her.”
I remembered this because a couple of weeks ago, the advice columnist who was “Dear Abby” announced her retirement, writing, in part, “I have always considered you, my readers, to be my friends. … You have taught me far more life lessons than I have ever taught you. … When I began writing (the column) in 1987, I promised myself that when the time came to retire, I would step aside to live life without a deadline. … I love you all.” It was signed “Jeanne Phillips aka Dear Abby.”
Eppie Lederer, the woman who was “Ann Landers,” died of multiple myeloma in 2002 at 83. Pauline Phillips, the original “Dear Abby,” died in 2013 at 94, after battling Alzheimer’s for more than a decade, and now her daughter is hanging it up.So, what are all those “wackos” supposed to do now?
This is a question that has bedeviled editors as the number of newspapers has dramatically diminished and places to find advice increased, with online sites, radio call-in shows, TV gab fests, podcasts, book shelves groaning under the weight of the self-help publishing machine, encounter groups, self-empowerment seminars and every sort of (Addictive Behavior) Anonymous organization.
It was once simpler. As long as there have been problems, there have been people willing to offer advice. Free advice could always be had from tavern keepers, clergymen, neighbors or parents. Newspapers got into the game as a way to boost circulation, inventing such things as comics and columns that addressed the concerns of the troubled. Advice, for the price of a paper.
These columns usually took the form of dealing with issues of love and romance. Though they did help with the problems of a few, for most they provided titillation or made people feel better about themselves, as in “At least there’s someone worse off than me.”
More Top Picks Best Frozen Meal Delivery For Elderly
For more than a century, readers have been writing to newspapers. Some have written to complain, some to praise. But most have written asking for advice about life’s vexations and troubles, or to share their observations on life’s oddities and joys. Ann Landers got some 2,000 every day.
She and her staff would do their best to personally answer every one, though only three or four a day were answered in print, thus fostering the most intimate relationship to exist between newspapers and readers.
You can still find advice columns in newspapers (the Tribune features Asking Eric, written by screenwriter R. Eric Thomas), but consider that at the height of the “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby” popularity in the 1960s, they were the most widely read columnists in the history of American journalism.
In some ways they were different — some characterized “Ann Landers” as more serious than “Dear Abby,” who was considered quicker with one-liners, for instance — but in a most essential way they were exactly alike.
They were twin sisters, the Friedman girls, born on the Fourth of July in 1918 in Sioux City, Iowa, Esther Pauline (Ann Landers) and, 17 minutes later, Pauline Esther (Dear Abby).
As kids, they were nicknamed “Eppie” (Esther) and “Popo” (Pauline) and were inseparable. In the Maroon & White, their Central High School’s 1936 yearbook, the twins were seniors that year, and this is what they wrote under one another’s photos: “Always with Eppie” and “Always with Popo.” Two days before their 21st birthday in 1939, they were both married at a ceremony so lavish that it was covered by the local paper.
They went their separate ways for a time and then in 1955 Eppie began writing the “Ann Landers” column in the Sun-Times, taking over from the late Ruth Crowley. She recruited her sister, then living outside San Francisco, to help.
That arrangement ended a few months later when Popo persuaded the San Francisco Chronicle to let her write an advice column under the byline Abigail Van Buren (aka “Dear Abby”).
This caused some familial troubles, exploding in a 1958 Life magazine article titled “Twin Lovelorn Advisers Torn Asunder by Success.” Over the years, the relationship had its ups and downs, its lengthy silences. But the competition between the two was good for circulation. Each would be carried by more than 1,000 newspapers (some, such as the Tribune for a time, carried both) and eventually each claimed 90 million daily readers worldwide.
It’s nice to know that they overcame the troubles and were in close contact — mostly faxing each other daily notes, comments, bits of family news and gossip — until Eppie’s death.
Death came calling again while I was thinking about Eppie, Popo and this whole advice matter with the mid-July news of the death of Eppie’s only child, the smart, vivacious and glamorous Margo Howard. Married three times and the mother of three adult children, Margo died in mid-July at 86. She was a memorable person, raised here, and a writer for our city’s newspapers for a while. For a time she got into the advice game, writing Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column.
I got to know Margo pretty well when I was her mother’s editor for the last five years of her life. During that time, Eppie often talked about the business of advice and I can still hear her saying, “Some of the letters are so sad. If I couldn’t insulate myself, I’d have gone to pieces.”
More Top Picks Best Stability Shoes For Plantar Fasciitis
And I can read something she once wrote: “The fact that my column has been a success underscores for me, at least, the central tragedy of our society. The loneliness, the insecurity, the fear that bedevils, cripples and paralyzes so many of us.”