Advice columnists Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips, aka Abigail Van Buren, and Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer, aka Ann Landers, both credited their upbringing in Sioux City for their astuteness in solving problems. Their daughters, successful writers themselves, affirm what their moms told them.
Jeanne Phillips took over the Dear Abby column in 2002 telling readers her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Lederer's daughter, Margo Howard – a journalist for 30 years – currently writes for the website Women on the Web.
“My mother loved Sioux City,” insisted Phillips in a phone interview from California. “I know she loved her years there. It was the environment where she learned values and was nurtured. Talk about a wholesome, wonderful place to raise your kids!”
“People often asked Mom, 'Where does your wisdom comes from?' and she would always answer them, 'It comes from being a Midwestern Jewish girl!'” said Howard from her home in Massachusetts. “Sioux City was very meaningful to my mother.”
People are also reading…
The Friedman twins were born July 4, 1918, the daughters of Russian Jewish immigrants, Abraham and Rebecca Friedman. Pauline or Popo was first, followed 17 minutes later by Esther or Eppie. They joined older sisters Dorothy (seven years older) and Helen (five years older).
When the four sisters gathered in 1983 for the wedding of Amy Greenberg and Scott Sachnaff in Sioux City, the older sisters characterized the twins as “holy terrors,” in a Sioux City Journal interview.
“Mom would talk about the fun she had with her twin sister,” Phillips said. “They once walked from a music lesson – they both played violin and might have been about 8 years old – and their route took them past the jail. They felt sorry for the prisoners so somehow they talked their way in to serenade them.”
Phillips laughed out loud. “If there ever was an incentive to turn over a new leaf, it must have been that moment for the prisoners.”
“Mom said they would get out of control,” Howard verified. “As little girls, they once cut the fringe off the lamps and rugs in their home and another time, went to visit the neighbor lady across street, went into her medicine chest and put all the bottles in the toilet. Grandfather had to buy her a toilet.
“You know what their punishment was?” Howard asked, then roared. “They were sent to their room! Together!”
The twins graduated from Central High School in 1936 and were dubbed in the yearbook, “cute and peppy” (Popo) and “peppy and cute” (Eppie).
“In high school, they dressed alike and went on dates together,” Phillips said. “Sometimes they would switch dates in the middle of the evening.”
The pair studied at Morningside College, “if you want to call it that,” Howard said dryly.
“Mom was very open about how little they went to classes,” she added. “They would go to visit their parents in California for weeks at a time. I think the fact that they were cute and adorable was how they got away with it.”
But during their matriculation at Morningside, the pair found time to craft a gossip column for the campus newspaper, The Collegian Reporter, under the title, “The Campus Rat” with their anonymous byline, PE-EP, their first and middle initials PE-EP. The schools recognized both by conferring honorary doctorate of humane letters degrees, for Eppie in 1964 and Popo in 1965.
Two days before their 21st birthday, Popo married Mort Phillips, whom she had met as a high school senior at a University of Minnesota dance, and Eppie married Jules Lederer, a buyer for Younkers Davidson's Department Store – in a double wedding ceremony July 2, 1938, at Shaare Zion Synagogue.
Eppie became Ann Landers for the Chicago Sun Times in 1955. Popo became Dear Abby for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1956.
But before Popo became Abby, Phillips recalled her mother volunteering.
“Mom helped coordinate hospital volunteers,” she said. “She told me she read to people in the hospital and would write letters for people who had strokes or other disabilities so they could correspond with their families.”
Howard recalled her mother was interested in politics.
“She was very tight with Democratic pols when we lived in Eau Claire, Wisc.; in fact, I believe she was on her way to being named National Committee chair,” she said. “Then, we moved to Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley went to my dad and told him the political game wasn't played that way and if Mom continued on with her politics, she'd end up in Lake Michigan with cement shoes.”
Today, Pauline Phillips is 92 years old. Jeanne Phillips is in her mid 60s. Esther Lederer died eight years ago after battling cancer. Howard turned 70 this year.
“It was a very, very slow progression,” Phillips said of her mother's struggle with Alzheimer's. “It's just very painful to watch.”
“When mother died in 2002, I was a wreck,” Howard confessed. “The only thing I could do was to immerse myself in the reader mail.”
Busy with their columns and family lives, the twins' visits to Sioux City were mainly for special occasions, particularly after the deaths of their parents, Rebecca in 1945 and Abraham in 1948.
“I have few memories of my mom's mother, but I remember visits to my grandfather's theater,” Howard said, referring to Friedman's movie and vaudeville theater. “And I remember going to the Green Gables.”
Phillips once asked her mom why the family didn't return to Sioux City to visit the cemetery where her grandparents were buried.
“'They're not there,' Mom told me,” she said. “I knew she meant they were with us, in our hearts.”
