╠Bombeck, Erma1927╨humorist and writerBorn on February 21, 1927, in Dayton, Ohio, Erma Louise Fiste began her writing career on her high school newspaper, and after graduation in 1944 she got a job with the Dayton Journal-Herald. A year later she entered the University of Dayton, from which she graduated in 1949. She then went back to the Journal-Herald, where she wrote obituaries, radio listings, and finally a housekeeping column for the women╒s page. In August 1949 she married William L. Bombeck, also a journalist. She left the newspaper on the birth of her first child in 1953 and for the next 11 years led the life of a suburban housewife. Her ambition to write surfaced again in 1964, when she persuaded a local weekly newspaper, the Kettering-Oakwood Times, to take a weekly humor column from her for $3 a week. The next year she began contributing a twice-weekly column to the Journal-Herald, and it was quickly picked up by the Newsday Specials syndicate. By 1968 the column, called ╥At Wit╒s End,╙ was appearing in some 200 newspapers around the country. Its rapid success was attributable to Bombeck╒s ability to capture the trials of modern housewifery and through her own style of satirical, hyperbolic, and often self-deprecatory humor to make them palatable. Cleaning, children, car pools, husbands, meetings, shopping╤all the ingredients of everyday life found their way into her column, and her readers identified with her and her misadventures by the millions. In addition to the column she wrote a number of books, including At Wit╒s End, 1967, Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own, 1971, I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression, 1973, The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank, a best-seller in 1976, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries╤What Am I Doing in the Pits?, also a best-seller, 1978, Aunt Erma╒s Cope Book, 1979, Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession and Erma Bombeck, Giant Economy Size, both 1983, Laugh Along with Erma Bombeck, 1984, Family╤The Ties that Bind...and Gag!, 1987, I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise: Children Surviving Cancer, 1989, and When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home, 1991. She wrote for several magazines as well and in 1969╨1974 had a regular column in Good Housekeeping. She was also in demand as a lecturer. By the late 1970s her thrice-weekly column, which she had moved to the Publishers-Hall syndicate and then the Field Newspaper syndicate in 1970, was distributed to some 800 newspapers, and she was firmly established as the leading woman comic writer of the day. Recognized not only for her contribution as a humorist, she was appointed to the President's National Advisory Committee for Women in 1978. ~styl ` , ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ ) !I ╥ !I τ !I Z !I h !I ô 5¬ ö !I ≤ !I
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