Humorist Erma Bombeck wrote syndicated newspaper columns for more than 30 years. She also produced a couple of TV shows, appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” for 11 years, gave speeches across the country, and published 15 books, 10 of which made it onto the New York Times bestseller list.
One of those books, according to her husband, educator Bill Bombeck, was her proudest accomplishment.
“I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise” was published in 1989 after Erma had spent most of the previous three years researching and interviewing children with cancer. Not exactly a humorous topic but Erma learned from these children that even cancer can be funny sometimes.
Erma Louise Fiste was born Feb. 21, 1927, in Dayton, Ohio, and knew almost immediately she wanted to be a writer. Even before she finished junior high school she was working for the local newspaper as a copygirl. After graduating from the University of Dayton, she became a reporter for the Dayton Journal-Herald.
In 1949, Erma married William (Bill) Bombeck, a young man she had met in school. They adopted a daughter before Erma gave birth to two sons.
Once her children were in school and bored with household chores, Erma started writing entertaining anecdotes for the local newspaper, recounting how she coped with stopped up toilets, children who thought she was the maid, and a husband who rarely ventured into the kitchen.
Her career took off when her column, “At Wit’s End,” was picked up for syndication and eventually ended up in hundreds of newspapers across the country.
Erma and Bill moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona, in 1971 after Erma fell in love with the desert climate and amazing sunsets. In a 1992 interview she said: “I tell everyone, where else in this world can you go and have Barry Goldwater, Alice Cooper and Erma Bombeck in the same neighborhood? … Never had I been to a place where I felt I belonged. This was it.”
Another of her neighbors was cartoonist Bil Keane who produced the popular comic strip “The Family Circus.” Erma and Bil collaborated on her book, “Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own,” published in 1971.
Erma’s career soared. She made the nation laugh through her columns, books, speaking engagements, and on national television. She won the Mark Twain award for top humorist in the country in 1973, was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame in 1980, and was elected Phoenix Woman of the Year in 1986. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to serve on the President’s Advisory Committee on Women and she worked diligently to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
Humor was Erma’s schtick until the day she was asked to write a book about children with cancer.
Invited to visit Camp Sunrise that sits just outside of Payson and offers children with cancer a chance to meet and interact with kids just like them and share their experiences, Erma was convinced she could not produce a funny book about something as tragic as a child coping with a life-threatening illness. But after talking with the children at the camp, she decided to give it a try.
“There was a need for a book to put in the hands of children who were surviving cancer,” she said. “They needed to know that someone was still living and beating the disease. They needed optimism and they needed someone to give them a voice and say, ‘This is the way I want people to treat me. This is what’s on my mind.’ … I was an instrument for them.”
After completing the first three chapters of the book, Erma gave her work to the children to critique. The kids were kind but frank. They liked what she had written but said, “you’ve just got to make it funnier.”
For most of the next three years, Erma roamed the country talking to children with cancer. According to her biographer, Lynn Hunter Colwell, Erma “learned that with or without a serious illness, kids love to have fun. They want to be treated the same as everyone else, and they thrive on pranks, silliness, and practical jokes. A healthy child might thread rolls of toilet paper through the trees on her best friend’s property. A child with cancer will twist the foot of his artificial leg so it faces the guy sitting behind him on the ski lift.”
According to the kids, if they did not hone and retain their sense of humor, they would not survive the trials they had to endure.
“I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise” (the title came from a youngster’s three wishes) was met with laughter and tears. Erma assigned all her domestic profits from the book to the American Cancer Society with foreign proceeds going to Eleanor Roosevelt International Cancer Research Fellowships. She received the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor in 1990.
Erma had her own brush with cancer in 1992 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery. She also suffered from a hereditary kidney disorder and by 1995, she was undergoing dialysis treatments four times a day as she waited for a transplant. She continued to produce her column twice a week and cranked out even more books.
In early April 1995, Erma went to San Francisco to receive a new kidney and all looked well for the funny lady who even treated kidney disease as a humorous platform. But complications occurred and on April 22, 1995, Erma died at the age of 69.
Funeral services were held in Phoenix with TV host Phil Donahue (who was her neighbor in Ohio) and Bil Keane serving as pallbearers. People crammed into St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church to hear Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien admit that “If there was ever anyone I wish could return from the dead, it would be Erma. God knows what she would write about that experience.”
Erma is buried in Dayton, Ohio.
