Erma Bombeck, American journalist and author (b. 1927)
Erma Louise Bombeck (née Fiste; February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her syndicated newspaper humor column describing suburban home life from 1965 to 1996. She also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers.
Between 1965 and April 17, 1996 – five days before her death – Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humor, chronicling the ordinary life of a Midwestern suburban housewife. By the 1970s, her columns were read semi-weekly by thirty million readers of the nine hundred newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Her work stands as a humorous chronicle of middle-class life in America after World War II, among the generation of parents who produced the Baby Boomers.