Renowned advice columnist Ann Landers dies

CHICAGO — Ann Landers, the columnist whose snappy, plain-spoken and timely advice helped millions of readers deal with everything from birth to death, died yesterday. She was 83.

The death of Landers, whose real name was Esther Lederer, was announced by the Chicago Tribune, publisher of her column. She died less than two weeks before her July 4 birthday.

The cause of her death was multiple myeloma, said her daughter, Margo Howard of Cambridge, Mass.

Her column first appeared in print Oct. 16, 1955, in the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1993, she was the world's most widely syndicated columnist, appearing in more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide with 90 million readers daily. Her twin sister, Pauline Phillips, followed her into the profession as writer of the Dear Abby column.

The feisty, outspoken Landers was a housewife when she won the Sun-Times contest to become the second Ann Landers after the woman who created the column died.

At the end of her career, she was a with-it great-grandmother whose name often appeared on lists of the country's most influential women.

Psychology Today once gave her credit for likely having more influence on the way people work out their problems than any other person of her era.

"All the column means to me is an opportunity to do good in the world," she said in a 1993 interview with that magazine.

Landers, whose columns were carried by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, attributed her skill to sheer instinct.

"I relate to these people like they are almost sitting in the same room. I feel their pain," she once said.

Her advice was always blunt, often sympathetic and sometimes sarcastic. But her answers, even to some of the silliest questions, were heartfelt.

When she began her column, newspaper editors forbade her from talking about homosexuality. In later years, there were virtually no taboos: In an Oct. 24, 1993, column, for example, she endorsed masturbation or mutual masturbation as a safe, realistic alternative to abstinence.

She was a great believer in counseling and wasn't too big-headed to seek advice from experts when a reader's problem proved too complicated.

Her column had lighthearted moments, though. Few topics excited readers more than the question of which direction the toilet paper should be hung in.

She made headlines and inspired countless water-cooler debates in 1985 when she asked women readers whether they prefer tenderness and cuddling or sexual intercourse. Some 90,000 readers sent in responses, and 72 percent voted for cuddling, she reported.

She answered hundreds of letters a day from her apartment, dispensing advice by typewriter because she just didn't like computers.

She was based at the Sun-Times until March 1987, when she switched syndication companies and moved to the Chicago Tribune.

Lederer, who owned the rights to the Ann Landers name, often said she did not expect anyone to replace her after her death. "There will never be another Ann Landers," she told The New Yorker in 1995. "When I go, the column goes with me."

The daughter of Russian immigrants, she was born Esther "Eppie" Friedman on July 4, 1918, in Sioux City, Iowa, 17 minutes before her twin sister. When Pauline became Dear Abby, they reportedly feuded several years before reconciling.

Landers married Jules Lederer, who helped found Budget-Rent-A-Car, in 1939 — in a gown matching that of her sister, who got married that same day.

The Lederers' daughter, Margo Howard, pens her own column, "Dear Prudence," for the online magazine Slate. The Lederers divorced in 1975, a decision Landers announced in "the most difficult column I have ever tried to put together."

Her long career was not without controversy. In 1982 she made headlines when it was revealed that she had recycled old material in her columns.

And her headstrong views got her into hot water in 1993, when she issued a national apology for adding her own inflammatory remarks to a letter from a charity watchdog group. Two years later, she apologized for using an ethnic slur to describe Pope John Paul II.

Though she expressed her own opinions in her columns, Landers once said she stayed sane by distancing herself from her readers' problems.

"I learned early in this work to take the problems seriously but not to take them too personally. I have to separate myself from the readers and realize what's happening to them is not happening to me," she told the Sun-Times in an interview marking her column's 30th anniversary.

She told readers at that time, "I intend to crank out this column as long as you find me useful and the good Lord gives me the strength to do it."

Information from the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times is included.