Rare Erma Bombeck Columns Go Online

By: E&P Staff The University of Dayton has added 15 rare columns to the Erma Bombeck Online Museum to mark what would have been Bombeck's 78th birthday on Feb. 21.

Bombeck wrote the columns as a teenager in 1946 and 1947 -- long before she became a widely syndicated humor columnist. They were published in the Arkay News, the monthly employee magazine of the Rike's department store in Dayton, Ohio, where the-then Erma Fiste had a part-time clerical job. The tongue-in-cheek columns discussed topics such as taking the bus to work, filling in for the boss when he was on vacation, and experiencing problems with escalators.

The columns are posted in their entirety at the three-year-old ErmaMuseum.org, according to Tim Bete, director of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop at the University of Dayton -- from which Bombeck graduated in 1949. Her column was appearing in about 700 newspapers when she died in 1996.