Bill Bombeck, a longtime Valley resident who moved his family to Arizona from Ohio just as his wife, Erma, was gaining national acclaim for her books and columns musing about the follies and thrills of domestic life in the suburbs, died Friday, his family confirmed.

Bombeck, 90, died at his Carefree home surrounded by family members, said his daughter, Betsy Bombeck.

“We had conversations about his life and had some laughter,” Betsy Bombeck said. “It was very much as he lived his life.”

Bombeck said her father was at peace with death. She recalled him saying he was excited to be reunited with his wife who died in 1996. 

“It’s never easy when you know someone’s going and not coming back,” Bombeck said. “But I also know that he’s going to be very happy where he’s going.”

Memories of a father who gave to strangers and loved fishing with his little girl

She said her father liked to give, but never sought credit.

He would hear of someone who needed help and without hesitation he’d anonymously fulfill their needs — even if they were a total stranger. 

“He was the most thoughtful and kind person and it didn’t matter who you were — he would help you if he could,” Bombeck said. 

Her fondest childhood memories with her father were when he would spend the day with her fishing and antique shopping. 

“I’m surprised he took me fishing at all because he was pretty serious about his fishing,” she said. “He had to really give up his day of fishing for a little girl who would talk all the time.” 

Bombeck said her father was that way with everyone, giving up his time to make everyone he met feel important.

“He would listen to them, he would talk with them,” she said. “Our family would always be the last people leaving an event because he was always talking to someone and hearing their story.”

“It’s a good way to live your life,” she said. “I wish I had his patience.”

A marriage made in Ohio that bloomed in Arizona

Bill and Erma Bombeck were married in 1949 and later lived in Centerville, Ohio, outside of Dayton.

Bill Bombeck was a high school teacher and later a principal. Erma, meanwhile, was a fledgling journalist, writing features for the Dayton Journal Herald. 

In the 1950s, their family grew — first with the addition of Betsy, and later her brothers, Andrew and Matthew, which prompted Erma to devote her time to fulltime motherhood.

In the early 1960s, she began contributing columns to a local paper, the Kettering-Oakwood Times, which paid her $3 a piece and proved popular. By 1965, the Dayton paper asked her to write a column three days a week, which was titled, “At Wit’s End.”

That effectively launched Erma Bombeck to national fame, as her humorous, and sometimes touching, columns about suburban family life eventually resonated across the country. Before long, it was appearing in hundreds of newspapers across the United States. Book deals followed, as did speaking tours.

MORE: ‘Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End’ celebrates the life and subversive humor of an Arizona icon

It was on one of those tours, when Erma Bombeck visited Phoenix, that she convinced her family to move to Arizona. By then, her national fame was established.

In 1971, the family settled in the town of Paradise Valley, where she wrote for another 25 years. 

“The good years of my life began with my marriage,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. “I was told I couldn’t have any children. Six years after our marriage, we adopted a daughter. And seven years after, I had a baby. I had four pregnancies in four years and two babies from them. The rest has been gravy. If I would never have written a line, I would have made it.”

Erma appeared for more than a decade on ABC’s Good Morning America, taping dispatches — steeped in her signature sarcasm — on life, motherhood and marriage from her home in Arizona.

Bill and Erma Bombeck lived in the Phoenix suburb until her death in 1996 at the age of 69, from complications after a kidney transplant, which she needed after suffering much of her life with adult polycystic kidney disease.

Bill’s favorite column by his wife was “Daddy Doll Under the Bed.” The 1981 column was about her father who died when she was 9.

He read it at the 2012 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton.

“My dad left the house every morning and always seemed glad to see everyone at night.”

 

Bombeck remarried to Carol Gillard; she died in Feb. 2011.

Bombeck is survived by his three children — Betsy, Andrew and Matthew — as well as five nieces and nephews. 

A funeral is planned for January 28.

 

 

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