Erma Bombeck

At 69 years old, Erma Bombeck has this physical status:

Erma Louise Bombeck (née Fiste; February 21, 1927-April 22, 1996) was an American humorist who gained a following for her newspaper column, which portrayed suburban life from the 1960s to the late 1990s.

Bombeck also published 15 books, the majority of which became best-selling ones.

Erma Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns from 1965 to 1996, often employing broad and occasionally eloquent humor, chronicling the everyday life of a Midwestern suburban housewife.

Her columns were read twice a week by 30 million readers of the 900 newspapers in the United States and Canada by the 1970s.

Early life

Erma Fiste was born in Bellbrook, Ohio, to a working-class family and was raised in Dayton. Erma (née Haines) and Cassius Edwin Fiste, who was the city crane operator, were her parents. Thelma, her elder paternal half-sister, lived with her younger sister. She started elementary school a year earlier than expected for her age, 1932, and she became an excellent student and a prolific reader. She loved the time's most popular humor writers. Erma's father died in 1936, and she and her mother went to her grandmother's house. Her mother remarried in 1938 to Albert Harris (a moving van owner). Erma studied tap dancing and singing, and she worked for a local radio station for eight years as a children's revue.

Erma wrote a parody column for Emerson Junior High School in 1940 and began writing The Owl, its newspaper. She began Parker (now Patterson) Vocational High School in 1942, where she wrote a serious column sprinkled with bits of humour. She began working at the Dayton Herald as a copygirl in the same year, sharing her full time with a girlfriend. Shirley Temple, who visited Dayton, was interviewed in 1944, and the interview became a newspaper feature.

Erma, a 44-year-old high schooler, was keen to get a college scholarship fund; for a year she spent as a typist and stenographer for the Dayton Herald and other companies; also did minor journalistic work (obituaries, etc.). The Dayton Herald is a newspaper published in the United States. Erma entered Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, in 1946, using the funds she earned. However, she failed the majority of her literary assignments and was refused for the university newspaper. When her funds ran out after one semester, she left after one semester.

Erma later enrolled in the University of Dayton, a Catholic university. She grew up in her family's house and worked at Rike's, a department store, where she created amusing content for the company's newsletter. In addition, she worked two part-time roles, including as an account's termite control specialist and as a public relations specialist at the local YMCA. Bro., Bro.'s English professor, was a student while she was in college. Tom Price talked to Erma about her writing skills as a writer, and she started writing for The Exponent, a university student newspaper. She earned a degree in English in 1949 and became a lifelong student ambassador for the university, assuaging financially and personally, and becoming a lifetime trustee of the university in 1987. In 1949, she converted to Catholicism from the United Brethren church and married Bill Bombeck, a former fellow student of the University of Dayton who was a veteran of the World War II Korean front. His new occupation was educator and school administrator. Bombeck remained active in the church for the remainder of her life.

Source

Awards and honors

• 1978, Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
• 1980, Ohio Women's Hall of Fame
• 2018, Arizona Women's Hall of Fame