One morning in August 1955, Eppie found herself reading and rereading the lovelorn column, called “Your Problems,” in the Chicago Sun-Times. And she suddenly realized exactly what she wanted to do: she would assist the lovelorn columnist! Eppie immediately phoned Wilbur Munnecke, a Sun-Times executive whom she had befriended years before. Might the columnist Ann Landers need help answering her mail?
“Funny you should ask,” Munnecke responded. “It is odd that you are calling me now. Ruth Crowley, our Ann Landers, died suddenly last week.” The newspaper was, in fact, seeking a replacement for Crowley. When Eppie suggested that she could be the new Ann Landers, Munnecke laughed out loud. Crowley had been a journalist and a nurse. Her column was syndicated in more than two dozen newspapers. Eppie Lederer was a housewife without a college degree, and more than 25 other women, many of whom were experienced journalists, had applied for the position.
Ruth Crowley’s photograph had always accompanied her popular column, written under the pen name Ann Landers, and the editors were hoping to keep the death and “rebirth” of Ann Landers a secret. For this reason, the editors of the Sun-Times were specifically looking for a woman who resembled the dark-haired woman, who had been in her late thirties when the photograph was taken. Physically at least, Eppie was perfect for the position. Most important, however, was the fact that she wanted the job very badly.
Eppie hurried over to the offices of the Sun-Times to pick up the package of materials being given to applicants. She recalls meeting Larry Fanning, an editor who was temporarily writing the column. He stared in disbelief when the housewife of 16 years candidly admitted her complete lack of credentials. “You might as well try,” Fanning told the determined Eppie. “You have nothing to lose.”
On her way home from the Sun-Times, Eppie realized that she would need a typewriter, so she rented an IBM. “To buy one would be presumptuous,” she thought at the time.
Eppie Lederer had never held a paying job and had just had her very first look at the inside of a newspaper office. But she had plenty of confidence in her own judgment, her old-fashioned common sense, and her ideas of what was right and wrong. She also possessed an amazing store of energy, and she had made a number of important connections with her outgoing personality and former political career.
The packet of materials for applicants for the “Your Problems” column consisted of a stack of hypothetical readers’ problems. Each applicant received an identical set of letters, and the editors who judged the submissions did not know the identities of any of the competitors. Eppie took three weeks to develop 40 sample columns, which she turned in under the byline “XYZ.”
Ruth Crowley had written “Your Problems” using the pseudonym Ann Landers for 13 years. The column had a snappy tone and provided down-to-earth advice. Eppie Lederer wrote — and spoke — in this very style. And she knew how to back up her own intuitive answers to readers’ problems with input from professionals with experience and credibility. For example, to answer a question about who owned the walnuts that fell from a woman’s tree into her neighbor’s yard, Eppie called on U.S. Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas. He told her that the neighbor could legally keep the nuts herself but she could not sell them. Eppie also sought input from other professionals with impressive credentials, including her old friend Dr. Robert Stolar, whom she turned to for advice on a question about psychosomatic (emotionally induced) hives.
A few days after submitting her carefully researched sample columns, Eppie received a call from Marshall Field, the publisher of the Sim-Times. “Good morning, Ann Landers,” he greeted the new columnist. — Virginia Aronson, in her book Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren (read for free)
