monday's mulling: erma bombeck {july 10, 2023}

One of Dayton's most beloved natives is Erma Bombeck, an American humorist, who became a household name in the 1970s and 1980s. She spoke for the women of an entire generation, revealing that being a housewife and a mother came with its own sets of concerns, and wasn’t necessarily a glamorous occupation. She wrote with hilarity and wit. She turned her views of daily life in the suburbs into satirical newspaper columns and best-selling books. The self-deprecating humor she employed in accounts of everyday crises of home and family struck a chord of familiarity among readers, who saw their lives mirrored in the situations she described. The Bombecks were America's first family of the refrigerator door. My mom clipped so many of Erma Bombeck's columns and taped them to the fridge.

Bombeck began writing columns when she was in junior high school. She worked at the Dayton Journal-Herald while she was in school and after graduation (1949) from the University of Dayton. She left the paper in 1953 to start a family, but later, with three children in school, she felt "too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair." She persuaded the editor of a suburban weekly to let her produce a column. The success of one of her books,  At Wit’s End, drew the attention of the Journal-Herald’s editor, who hired her to write three columns a week. A short time later her columns were syndicated and eventually appeared in more than 900 newspapers.

In 1992 she underwent a mastectomy and shortly afterward her kidneys began to fail. She underwent dialysis and was placed on waiting lists for a transplant, but though a donor match was found, she died of complications after the surgery.

Erma Bombeck is buried in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery. The Bombecks' legacy includes the University of Dayton’s biennial Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, the only one in the country dedicated to both humor and human interest writing, a building at UD carrying the family name, their house on Cushwa Drive now on the National Register of Historic Places, and a street sign dedication. Dayton left an indelible imprint on the Bombecks and they, in turn, have left an enduring legacy in Dayton.

"I've seen the motherhood role played by men, grandparents, friends, aunts, and even social workers. It doesn't matter who plays it. What does matter that when the curtain goes up each day, someone is there to dazzle, ad-lib, support, comfort, listen, and fulfill what I feel is the most important role I'll be ever offered in my life. It's the only one I'll be remembered for." ~ Erma Bombeck