Erma Bombeck: Author, American Humorist

In the years following the Second World War, American women experienced a backlash. During the war years, women on the home front had been courted by the defense industry with advertisements of Rosie the Riveter clutching her bicep. A patriotic woman was a working woman. Conversely, beginning in 1945, a patriotic woman was one who stepped aside to give her job to a returning GI and returned to a blissful existence in the home. As the American housewife became an icon of the time, suburbia grew. Soon, Middle America was rife with women obsessed with floor cleaner, whitening agents, and the task of creating gourmet meals from soup mix and a pot roast. A cry of protest, or more fittingly- a guffaw- emerged from these suburbs during this idyllic time. It emanated from a gifted visionary who dared to speak the truth. Her name was Erma Bombeck.

Erma Bombeck was born Erma Fiste on February 21, 1927 in Dayton, Ohio. Her mother, also named Erma, was sixteen years old when Erma was born. Her father, a crane operator, was seventeen years older than her mother, and had brought to the marriage an older half-sister for the young Erma. When she was nine years old, Erma’s father died. She and her mother moved in with her maternal grandparents, and true to the time, her mother sought work outside of the home in order to contribute to the family income. Despite a shortage of extravagances, Erma’s mother was able to pay for tap dancing lessons for the young Erma. Erma was apparently so gifted as a tap dancer, that she was hired by a local radio station as part of a children’s program and performed regularly for eight years.

Despite her mother’s aspirations to see her go on to stardom as a dancer or singer, the young Erma knew at a young age that she wanted to write. An avid reader and gifted student, she found her calling in journalism. In 1940, she entered Emerson Junior High School and began writing a humor column for the school newspaper. She continued her work with school publications throughout high school, and obtained a part time job as a copy girl with the Dayton Journal Herald in 1942.

In 1946, Erma attended Ohio University at Athens, but struggled with her coursework. She performed so poorly that professors advised her to abandon her plans to become a journalist. Discouraged, Erma left after one year. She later enrolled in the University of Dayton and experienced a transformation of sorts. With a changed atmosphere and the encouragement of her English professor, her writing matured and was featured prominently in the university’s publication The Exponent. She honed her talents further by writing the company newsletter for a local department store. Her writing was sardonic, witty, and well received.

In 1949, Erma returned to the Dayton Journal Herald and began to write for a living. Unfortunately, like most women journalists of the time, she was restricted to women’s columns. If she wasn’t writing about a garden party, she was writing an obituary. Eventually her demands for more stimulating assignments were heard, and Erma found herself writing feature articles and her own humor column entitled “Operation Dustrag.” Erma also married Bill Bombeck in 1949, an aspiring teacher who would be her devoted companion for many years.

In 1953 the Bombecks, after trying to conceive for several years adopted a baby girl, Betsy. The Bombecks soon discovered that they could conceive after all, and Betsy was joined by Andrew in 1955 and Matthew in 1958. Throughout the 1950s, Erma worked hard to be the consummate mother and homemaker, despite her early jabs at domesticity in her columns. Those days scrubbing floors were not wasted, as she focused on her children’s needs, and took careful notes of their misadventures. It was rich material and Bombeck undoubtedly knew what to do with it.

In 1965 Bombeck approached the Kettering-Oakwood Times with several sample columns. She was hired to write several weekly columns at $3 each. The next year, she was approached by the Dayton Journal Herald and offered $50 for two weekly columns. Within weeks her column was picked up for syndication by the Newsday Newspaper Syndicate. Her increasingly popular column, “At Wit’s End” began to appear thrice weekly in thirty six major U.S. newspapers. By 1966 Bombeck was appearing on the lecture circuit for $15,000 per appearance. Doubleday released a compilation of her articles, also entitled At Wit’s End in 1967, further clinching her hold on the collective American funny bone.
Bombeck seemed destined to become a household name. By 1969, “At Wit’s End” was appearing in 500 newspapers across the United States. By 1978, 900 newspapers were carrying her column. Bombeck wrote regularly for several popular magazines like Good Housekeeping and Redbook. She appeared on Good Morning America from 1975 to 1986. She helped develop a television adaptation of one of her books, and wrote a pilot for a series based on her work, but neither proved particularly successful.

Bombeck released more books through Doubleday and McGraw-Hill throughout the next two decades, including Just Wait Until You Have Children of Your Own (1971), I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (1974), The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (1976), and If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (1978). Most notably, she released I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise: Children Surviving Cancer in 1989. The work was an outgrowth of her observations of children afflicted with cancer, and a reflection of the oddly uplifting lessons that these children could offer.

Although decidedly apolitical in her columns, Bombeck took an interest in the political advancement of women. She served on the Presidential Advisory Committee for Women during the Carter Administration and campaigned for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. She found it ironic that homemakers like herself, who had been previously dismissed by feminists, soon became a lynch pin in securing the amendment’s passage. She quipped, “I liken the ERA to a war in which they forgot to invite the housewives.”

In the 1990s Bombeck was faced with her own battles. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992 and had a mastectomy. Several years later, she began to suffer from polycystic kidney disease and required regular dialysis treatment. True to her humility, she refused to be placed ahead of others waiting for kidney transplants. In 1996, she received a transplant, but experienced complications shortly thereafter. She died on April 22, 1996.

For three decades Erma Bombeck graced American homes with her writing. She explored the absurdity and frustrations that come with motherhood. She exposed the folly that comes with striving to be the perfect wife and mother. She sometimes consoled and always delighted. Although she never won a Pulitzer for her contributions to journalism, Bombeck is undoubtedly one of the most renown and beloved American humorists of the twentieth century. For sharing her laughter, Erma Bombeck is applauded as a true Steamroller.