Erma Bombeck: American Humorist

Erma Bombeck is arguably Centerville’s most famous citizen. She was a newspaper columnist who achieved great popularity in her humor columns describing suburban homelife.

Between 1965 and 1996 she wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, using humor to chronicle the ordinary life of a Midwestern suburban housewife. It is estimated that her columns were read by 30 million readers in the 900 newspapers across the U.S. and Canada. Her work stands as a humorous chronicle of middle-class life in the suburbs of America after World War II.

Erma was born in Bellbrook Ohio on February 21, 1927 to Cassius and Erma Fiste.  Erma’s father died in 1936, and the family moved to Dayton to live with her maternal grandmother. She attended Parker Co-op High School, graduating in 1944. She entered Ohio University in 1946, but dropped out after one semester, when her funds ran out, to enter the University of Dayton. She graduated in 1949 with a degree in English and married Bill Bombeck, a fellow graduate, in that same year.  

Bill began his career as an educator and Erma started writing a column for Dayton’s Journal Herald titled, “Operation… Dust Rag.” She stopped writing the column in 1954 after the arrival of her daughter, Betsy, to devote her energies to being a mother and a housewife.

The Bombeck’s moved to 162 Cushwa Drive in Centerville, with their three children, in 1959. 

Once her children were all in school, she resumed her writing career with a weekly column titled, “Zone 59,” for the Kettering-Oakwood Times. In 1965 her column, “At Wit’s End,” which she had started writing for the Dayton Journal Herald, was picked up by the Newsday Newspaper Syndicate for national distribution.The popularity of this column led to the publication of her first book, also titled, At Wit’s End, by Doubleday in 1967. The success of this book led to many more books and to new opportunities; for instance, she became a regular on the Arthur Godfrey radio show and on ABC’s Good Morning America.

In 1971, the Bombeck’s moved to Paradise Valley, AZ, where she continued to write, enhancing her reputation as a humorist and a spokeswoman for the American family.

Erma’s books include Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own, I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression, If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?, Aunt Erma’s Cope Book, Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession, Family: The Ties That Bind . . . and Gag!, All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room, When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home, and A Marriage Made in Heaven . . . or Too Tired for an Affair.

Erma died on April 22, 1996, aged 69, from complications following a kidney transplant operation. She is buried in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery under a very large rock delivered to the cemetery from her home in Arizona.

The Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop

The Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop started in 2000 at the University of Dayton as a one-time event to commemorate the Bombeck family's gift of her papers to the university. The event proved so popular that it has been held every other year since then. The two-day, three-night workshop includes keynote speakers and breakout sessions on the topics of humor writing, human-interest writing, the publishing process, marketing for authors, and blogging, among other areas. Past keynote speakers have included Art Buchwald, Nancy Cartwright, Dave Barry, Garrison Keillor, Mike Peters, Bil Keane and Phil Donahue. More than 350 writers from around the country attend each workshop, which is held on the University of Dayton campus.