Remembering Erma Bombeck

fureverywhere

fureverywhere

beloved friend who will always be with us in spiri
Location
Northern NJ, USA
Someone that came to mind recently as a topic...who used to read Erma Bombeck??? She passed in 1996, I remember reading her obituary poolside in Florida. One of the first celebrity deaths that made me genuinely sad. My Mom always read her column and had her books. I enjoyed them too and it became a regular thing each holiday. I would give Mom or she would give me the latest book.

I inherited all the books from Mom. I still have them with inscriptions from both of us. One of those collections that if there was a fire or some calamity, I'd be carrying those while ushering out humans and critters. For those who don't know her she was a humor writer beginning in the 1960's. Unique because she honestly chronicled the life of a post-war housewife in the burbs.

It was a generation of Tupperware parties, molded salads, Dad off to work and Mom working on the icky wax on the kitchen floor. Before Betty Friedan she was poking fun at women's frustration of the times. She was still writing after Women's Liberation, as she got older with her husband, facing cancer...What an amazing woman. Who else enjoyed Aunt Erma???
 

I loved Erma. You could always relate to something in every one of her books. I remember something about gift boxes. If she gave you a gift in a box she wanted to know how long you would be keeping the box and when it would be returned. My Grandma use to do that. Kept every box she got. I think I still have some. When we unwrap our gifts at Christmas some of the boxes show up. Some of us remember what gifts were in them from years before. I always think of Erma when that happens.
 

Excellent humorist, basing it all on real life and shared experiences. Even as a lad I enjoyed reading The Grass is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank and her other great books.
 
I read all her books too. She was a favorite of mine. Here's a few interesting things I just snagged off the internet:
Erma Bombeck was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease (an incurable, untreatable genetic disease) when she was 20 years old. She survived breast cancer and mastectomy, and kept secret the fact that she had kidney disease, enduring daily dialysis. She went public with her condition in 1993. On a waiting list for transplant for years, one kidney had to be removed, and the remaining one ceased to function. On April 3, 1996, she received a kidney transplant. Erma Bombeck died on April 22, 1996, aged 69, from complications of the operation.[SUP][2][/SUP] Her remains are interred in the Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio, under a large rock from the Phoenix desert.

In 1943, for her first journalistic work, Erma interviewed Shirley Temple, who visited Dayton, and the interview became a newspaper feature.

Erma enrolled in Ohio University at Athens, Ohio, in 1946. However, she failed most of her literary assignments and was rejected for the university newspaper. She left after one semester, when her funds ran out. I guess she showed Ohio University, didn't she? :)
 
Erma enrolled in Ohio University at Athens, Ohio, in 1946. However, she failed most of her literary assignments and was rejected for the university newspaper. She left after one semester, when her funds ran out. I guess she showed Ohio University, didn't she? :)

I love reading such things. The same thing with Dave Barry. He had a professor tell him he would never be a writer. You know he probably thought about that teacher after winning the Pulitzer.
 
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