Last week we lost a cultural Icon:  Pauline Friedman Philips – otherwise known as Abigail VanBuren or “Dear Abby”.  In the pre-therapy era where we didn’t have an internet to go to for advice from our social networks or blogs or a lineup of daytime chat shows to share “The View” of how to handle our modern lives, people who needed guidance on how to navigate the social landscape but were to shy to reach out to their small social circles (lest they be judged) relied on the privacy and anonymity of their local paper’s advice columnist…or nationally syndicated columnists such as Dear Abby who became the necessary forward-thinking voice of an in-between generation.

Here is a taste of an appropriately snappy article from the Associated Press, as featured on ABC.Com, remembering Dear Abby’s contribution (with the help of her daughter’s memories)  and sharing a bit about her context, which, in turn, shaped our social context.

Two men had recently bought a house together in San Francisco, and the neighbors were annoyed. The men were entertaining “a very suspicious mixture of people,” the neighbors wrote, asking: “How can we improve the neighborhood?”

“You could move,” Dear Abby replied.

That zinger, contained in the 1981 collection “The Best of Dear Abby,” was such classic Abby — real name, Pauline Friedman Phillips — that it moved her daughter to burst into laughter Thursday when reminded of it, even though she had just returned from the funeral of her mother. The elder Phillips had died a day earlier at age 94 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

“People weren’t really talking about homosexuality back then,” Jeanne Phillips, who now writes the famous syndicated column, said. “But you know, there wasn’t a subject my mother wouldn’t take on.”

As the world said goodbye to Dear Abby on Thursday, the Web was full of her snappiest one-liners, responses to thousands of letters over the decades that she wrote in her daily column. But her admirers noted that behind the humor and wit was a huge heart, and a genuine desire to improve people’s lives.

“She really wanted to help people,” said Judith Martin, the etiquette columnist known as Miss Manners. “Yes, she wrote with humor, but with great sympathy. She had an enormous amount of influence, and for the good. Her place in the culture was really extraordinary.”

The long-running “Dear Abby” column first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1956. Phillips was hardly experienced, but she had managed to snag an interview for the job. A skeptical editor allowed her to write a few sample columns, and Phillips was hired.

She wrote under the name Abigail Van Buren, plucking the name Abigail from the Bible and Van Buren from American history. Her column competed for decades with that of Ann Landers, who was none other than her twin sister, Esther Friedman Lederer (she died in 2002.) Their relationship was stormy in their early adult years, but they later regained the closeness they’d had growing up in Sioux City, Iowa.

Carolyn Hax, who writes her own syndicated advice column, feels that one can’t speak of one sister without the other, so influential were they both, and at the same time.

“Any of us who do this owe them such a debt,” she said. “The advice column was a backwater of the newspaper, and now it is so woven into our cultural fabric. These columns are loved and widely read, by people you wouldn’t expect. That couldn’t have happened without them.”

In a time before confessional talk shows and the nothing-is-too-private culture of the Web, the sisters’ columns offered a rare window into Americans’ private lives and a forum for discussing marriage, sex and the swiftly changing mores of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

The two columns differed in style, though. While Ann Landers responded to questioners with homey, detailed advice, Abby’s replies were more flippant and occasionally risqué, like some collected for her 1981 book.

Dear Abby: My boyfriend is going to be 20 years old next month. I’d like to give him something nice for his birthday. What do you think he’d like? — Carol

Dear Carol: Nevermind what he’d like, give him a tie.

Dear Abby: I’ve been going with this girl for a year. How can I get her to say yes? — Don

Dear Don: What’s the question?

WANT MORE?  Read the full article by clicking the link below:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/dear-abbys-legacy-wit-warmth-snappy-advice-18243616

 

Related articles

• 10 Weird And Wonderful Dear Abby Columns (buzzfeed.com)
• ‘Dear Abby’ advice columnist dies at age 94 – San Francisco Chronicle (sfgate.com)
• Dear Abby’s legacy: Wit, warmth, and snappy advice (mysanantonio.com)