'Dear Abby' advice columnist Pauline Phillips dies at 94
LA TIMES January 17th, 2013
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Pauline Friedman Phillips, who as Abigail Van Buren -- "Dear Abby" — for more than 40 years dispensed advice to newspaper readers worldwide on everything from snoring spouses to living wills, has died. She was 94.
Phillips died Wednesday in Minneapolis after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, according to a statement from Universal Uclick syndicate.
The youngest of four daughters of Russian immigrants, Pauline Esther Friedman and her identical twin, Esther Pauline, who became advice columnist Ann Landers, were born in Sioux City, Iowa, on July 4, 1918. Phillips once said that as children, “We thought all those firecrackers and skyrockets were just for us.”
PHOTOS: 'Dear Abby' columnist Pauline Friedman Phillips | 1918-2013
Perhaps those pyrotechnics were a harbinger of things to come for the vivacious, popular Friedman twins — "Popo” and “Eppie” — who were destined to become two of the most famous and influential women of their generation.
For 71 years, she was married to Morton B. Phillips, scion of the National Pressure Cooker Co. (Presto). From an office in their Beverly Hills home, she continued to edit the column into her 80s, although in later years daughter Jeanne Phillips took over much of the writing.
“I started out editing her,” Jeanne Phillips said in 1999, “and now she edits me.” She plans to “continue the good work my mother started as long as I'm able. It provides a service people absolutely need.”
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