Erma Bombeck – The Myth about Legends

by Susan Marie Frontczak

Erma Bombeck has two things in common with celebrities of Art and Sports: (1) they make it look easy; (2) it’s not.

Let’s look at a few American legends from the mid-20th century. Between 1951 and 1968, Mickey Mantle made slugging yet another homer out of the park seem a breeze. Peggy Fleming executed her flawless  programs on the rink through five US titles, three world titles and a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics as if it was no sweat. Operatic soprano Beverly Sills hit coloratura-embellished, pitch-perfect high notes like child’s play. And Erma Bombeck, time and again, made us laugh with her simple observations on the everyday absurdities of being a wife and mother as if it were a piece of cake. We might easily assume all she had to do was turn on her IBM Selectric and the words just typed themselves. 

The  image of effortlessness, however, is a myth. It’s not that these stars didn’t have talent. But talent alone did not earn them the esteem in which they are held today. The appearance of ease that is the hallmark of expertise belies the discipline and hard work that led to their success. 

Isn’t Erma just chatting to us across the kitchen table over a cup of coffee?  Nay, her words only read like silk off a spool because she has first put them through the wringer of editing. She quipped that under “Occupation” on her driver’s license she entered “Rewriter.”  She would search for the lead to lure us in, sift the words to find the perfect turn of phrase, play with sentence length to guide the readers’ timing and then bop us playfully on the head with her ending. Even when the ideas came easily as when she attended a basketball game with her daughter who accidentally dropped an earring down the pants of the man in the next row, molding the memory into a story required focus, finesse and a good bit of mental elbow grease. 

Another myth we like to ascribe to accomplished celebrities is “overnight success.” So, perhaps it is not surprising that Erma Bombeck is often touted for her “instant” rise to fame. Less than a month after her column “At Wit’s End” first appeared in the Dayton Journal Herald in 1965, it was syndicated by Newsday. This narrative gives the impression that one day Erma – fed up with ironing sheets, removing yellow wax buildup from her kitchen floor and packing peanut butter sandwiches in her kids’ school lunches – sat down at a random typewriter, discovered her sense of humor, gave a cry of “Eureka!” and overnight became a columnist as widely read as Mark Twain. Presto! 

A 25-year rise to success is closer to the truth. Young Erma Fiste cut her teeth writing snide humor articles for her school paper The Owl a quarter-century before “At Wit’s End” saw the light of day. That was in 1940, at age 13. She wangled a half-time job at the Dayton Journal Herald as a copy girl at age 15 just so she could learn all the ins and outs of the newspaper business. She contributed funny articles to the University of Dayton’s The Exponent while in college, helped her fellow employees at Rike’s Department Store laugh via their company newsletter and tried her hand at serious topics by editing flight manuals at (what later became) Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and writing newspaper obituaries. As a young wife and mother, her occasional column “Operation Dustrag” helped her hone her craft at tickling our funny bones while still working in relative obscurity.

But with ”Operation Dustrag” Erma was ahead of her time. Post-World War II, women were expected to retreat to the hearth, relinquishing their jobs to the returning soldiers.  Magazines extolled the virtues of keeping a perfect home, complete with all the latest appliances. Making fun of housework and motherhood just wasn’t an acceptable form of humor.  Viewpoints changed when Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique brought the plight of “just a homemaker” to national attention in 1963. 

Rather than revolt, Erma Bombeck knew “if you can laugh at it, you can live with it.”  Housewives agreed. “At Wit’s End” reached national distribution. By 1970, 500 papers carried her column, increasing to more than 900 by 1990. She appeared on Good Morning America and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She also churned out more than a dozen books.  In a speech at the University of Dayton, her alma mater, Erma remarked, “Writing a book is like giving birth. You figure the stupidest girl in the class did it, so how hard can it be?” As a mother and as a writer, she found out. We are the beneficiaries. With humor and heart, Erma helps us celebrate the ordinary. We get to feel special too.

1927 Erma Louise Fiste is born in Dayton, Ohio

1942 Works as a copygirl at Dayton Journal-Herald  while attending Patterson Vocational High School. Meets Bill Bombeck, a copyboy

1949 Graduates from the University of Dayton and marries Bill

1953-1958 Gives birth to three children

1964 Hired by The Kettering-Oakwood Times to write a weekly humor article

1965 Hired by the Dayton Journal Herald to write a humor column “At Wit’s End” which is syndicated by Newsday a month later

1966 Column  syndicated in 38 newspapers

1970-1978 Column is syndicated in 500 newspapers; publishes I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression, The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank, and If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?

1978-1982 Serves on the Presidential Advisory Committee for Women; works for ratification of the ERA

1979-1983 Publishes Aunt Erma’s Cope Book and Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession

1985 Column syndicated in 900 newspapers

1987-1990 Publishes Family: The Ties that Bind (And Gag!) and I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise

1996 Dies following complications from a kidney transplant

“If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?” 

“Housework, if done right, will kill you.”

“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.”

“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen; when they’re finished, I climb out.”

“How come the first thing I notice in a doctor’s office is whether or not his plants are dead?”

 “Don’t tell me about the scientific advances of the twentieth century. So men are planning a trip to the moon. So computers run every large industry in America. So body organs are being transplanted like perennials. Big deal! You show me a washer that will launder a pair of socks and return them to you as a pair, and I’ll light a firecracker.”

“I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.”

“My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.”

“If you can laugh at it, you can live with it.”

Forever Erma by Erma Bombeck (1996)

A collection of favorite At Wit’s End columns, published posthumously.

A Marriage Made in Heaven or Too Tired for an Affair by Erma Bombeck (1993) 

One of her last books, more autobiographically revealing than most.

I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise by Erma Bombeck (1989) 

A humorous and life-giving account of children living with cancer.

Erma Bombeck, Writer and Humorist by Lynn Hutner Colwell (1992)

The only authorized biography of Erma Bombeck, intended for aspiring young writers. 

Erma also published ten other humorous books about everyday life.