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Advice columnist Ann Landers dies at 83


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CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- Advice columnist Ann Landers -- whose real name was Esther Pauline Lederer -- was recalled Sunday as a well-read woman with "her thumb on everything" who refused treatment for the cancer that killed her.

Lederer, whose friends called her Eppie, died at home Saturday of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow, said the Chicago Tribune, the flagship newspaper for her column. She died less than two weeks before her July 4 birthday, when she would have been 84.

Lederer's twin sister, Pauline Esther Phillips, followed Lederer's footsteps into the advice business, writing under the name Abigail Van Buren. Phillips and her daughter Jeanne Phillips still write the column known as Dear Abby.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist and friend Michael Sneed said Lederer chose not to have treatment for her illness and didn't publicize it beyond her family and close friends. Lederer began her column at the Sun-Times.

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Esther 'Eppie' Lederer, known to newspaper readers as advice columnist Ann Landers, has died at age 83. CNN's Miles O'Brien reports. (June 23)
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"Here she gave advice to millions of people all over the world, and yet Eppie, when she found out six months ago that she had very serious cancer, opted not to have any treatment at all," Sneed said. "She was given pain killers and that's it, and she worked almost up to the end. She was an amazing woman.

"Eppie said that she wanted no funeral, she wanted no memorial service. She wanted none of this folderol that follow people dying ... She had a great life, and I think she just wanted to live the last months of her life as best she could rather than perhaps mutilated by treatment."

Lederer described herself as the "general manager of the world" and was always dispensing advice, Sneed said.

"She did have her thumb on everything," Sneed said.

In Lederer's later years, she wrote her column from home, sometimes in the bathtub, and always appreciated a good time, she said.

"She loved going out in the evenings. She slept in the morning. She got up, she worked in the afternoon and then she went out in the evening again. And she was always full of smiles," Sneed said.

"Eppie was always out there. She had a lot of friends. She listened. She was incredibly bright. She cared. She was very liberal. She was very privately involved politically. She just always stayed on top of things."

Although Lederer was Jewish, one of her closest friends for 40 years was a priest, who gave her a rosary and was one of the few people allowed to see her in the last weeks of her life, Sneed said.

Lederer always kept up with world events, too.

"She was always reading," Sneed said. "If you were with Eppie, you were going to be talking about all kinds of things other than your personal life. You were going to be talking about the world."

Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Lederer in 1939 married Jules Lederer, who went on to found Budget Rent-A-Car. (They were divorced in 1975.) She began her column in 1955 at the Sun-Times after winning a contest to replace the original Ann Landers, who had died.

Under Lederer's pen, it quickly became one of the most widely syndicated newspaper columns in the world, reaching nearly 90 million readers daily in 1,200 papers.

In 1987, after a change in ownership of her syndicate, Lederer left the Sun-Times and moved to the Tribune.

There will be no new Ann Landers, which was what Lederer wanted, the Tribune reported Sunday.

"That name is worth at least a million dollars," she said in a 1998 interview. Her daughter, Margo, said it was unclear whether the columns Lederer already had written would be published.

"Eppie Lederer was a great columnist and a wonderful person," said a statement released by John W. Madigan, the Tribune's chairman and chief executive officer. "She helped people with her advice and made important contributions to society through the causes she supported."



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