"Dear Abby" Founder Pauline Phillips Dies

'Dear Abby' founder Pauline Phillips dies

Phillips battled Alzheimer's disease

Published On: Jan 17 2013 01:48:18 PM EST Updated On: Jan 17 2013 02:22:40 PM EST

Fred Prouser/Reuters

Pauline Phillips, founder of the widely syndicated "Dear Abby" advice column, has died after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, according to the syndication service that distributes the column. She was 94...

http://www.clickondetroit.com/enter...dies/-/1718940/18171156/-/x93wx0/-/index.html

It would be interesting to read the Dear Abby letters from 1950's (when it began) and compare them to today's letters.

RIP, Ms. Phillips

ETA: Well, I did find this link to a 1961 column.

http://reprint.areavoices.com/2011/05/08/1961-bill-me-thrill-me/


YIKES!!! Forget that one up there....read this one, instead:

http://reprint.areavoices.com/2009/05/09/1959-dear-abby-said-wife-needs-to-be-punished-babysat/

Read Dear Abby for years but gave it up when she had to leave...the new ones who write advice columns just don't have the good sense and logic that she helped so many people with....IMO

RIP Ms. Phillips....

'Dear Abby' advice columnist dies at age 94

By STEVE KARNOWSKI, AP
15 minutes ago

MINNEAPOLIS — Pauline Friedman Phillips, who as Dear Abby dispensed snappy, sometimes saucy advice on love, marriage and meddling mothers-in-law to millions of newspaper readers around the world and opened the way for the likes of Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil and Oprah, has died. She was 94.

Phillips died Wednesday in Minneapolis after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, said Gene Willis, a publicist for the Universal Uclick syndicate.

"My mother leaves very big high heels to fill with a legacy of compassion, commitment and positive social change," her daughter, Jeanne Phillips, who now writes the column, said in a statement.

Private funeral services were held Thursday, Willis said.

The long-running "Dear Abby" column first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1956. Mother and daughter started sharing the byline in 2000, and Jeanne Phillips took over in 2002, when the family announced Pauline Phillips had Alzheimer's disease.

Pauline Phillips wrote under the name Abigail Van Buren. Her column competed for decades with the advice of Ann Landers, written by her twin sister, Esther Friedman Lederer, who died in 2002. Their relationship was stormy in their early adult years, but they later regained the closeness they had growing up in Sioux City, Iowa.

The two columns differed in style. Ann Landers responded to questioners with homey, detailed advice. Abby's replies were often flippant and occasionally risqué one-liners, like some of those collected for her 1981 book "The Best of Dear Abby"...

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/entertainment/20130117/US.Obit.Dear.Abby/