Newspaper columnists Erma Bombeck, left, and Evelyn Birkby built parallel careers in media. (Photos: The American Writers Museum and University of Iowa Library)
A terrific one-woman play about the beloved newspaper columnist Erma Bombeck opened last week and continues through Dec. 21 at the Temple Theater in downtown Des Moines. “Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End,” by a pair of former reporters for the Des Moines Register and Tribune, weaves together some of Bombeck’s best lines from her 30-plus years of syndicated housekeeping columns.
When we reviewed the show for dsm magazine, it reminded us of the late Evelyn Birkby, who wrote a housekeeping column of her own for more than twice as long — 70 years — for the Shenandoah Evening Sentinel (now the Southwest Iowa Herald). She was also a friendly, familiar voice on KMA Radio, where her folksy “Kitchen-Klatter” was the longest-running homemaking program in radio history. She represented Iowa at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival during Iowa’s sesquicentennial in 1996, was named an Iowa Master Farm Homemaker in 1998 and was featured in an Iowa PBS documentary in 2009.
She died in 2021 at the age of 101, but her legacy lives on through, among other things, her 10 books. If you’re looking for a good read about life in Iowa, or maybe a holiday gift, pick up her “Neighboring on the Air” (1998) or “Always Put in a Recipe and Other Tips for Living from Iowa’s Best-Known Homemaker” (2012).
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