750 Turn Out to Praise a Woman Full of Advice
After 30 years of doling out advice to the depressed, the anxious, the worried, the lovelorn, the perplexed, the happy and the puzzled, columnist Dear Abby was left almost speechless at a dinner Friday night in her honor.
The popular advice columnist managed some brief thanks after being praised at a black-tie dinner benefiting the Institute for Destructive Behaviors and the Suicide Prevention Center. And after it was all over, all she could say was, “I’m overwhelmed, really. I’m all choked up.”
Some 750 people turned out Friday night at the Century Plaza Hotel for the dinner, and the vast majority stayed to the very end--a rarity on the charity circuit.
Abigail Van Buren and the Suicide Prevention Center are linked through the column; she urges suicidal readers to call their local suicide hot lines or centers. Earlier in the evening Van Buren praised the Los Angeles center’s hot line and said she had observed several of its counseling sessions.
‘Needed to be Honored’
“There is a fantastic symmetry between her work and ours,” said Dr. Joseph Shannon, director and chief executive officer of the institute and center. “We felt she needed to be honored, and actually the time span is almost the same--her column has been in syndication for 30 years and the center is in its 28th year.”
Fellow columnist Erma Bombeck was the emcee for the event (which expected to raise $150,000) and June Allyson was the celebrity chairwoman. Others who attended included Cary and Barbara Grant; Gary Collins and Mary Ann Mobley; Donald O’Connor; modeling agent Nina Blanchard; Disney chairman and chief executive officer Michael Eisner; Charles Nelson Reilly; L.A. County Supervisor Ed Edelman; Raphael Chaikin, the center’s chairman of the board; and dinner chairman Miriam Groman.
After dinner, much dancing (including a conga line) and dessert (a heart-shaped Dear Abby logo in chocolate), came the speeches. Bombeck fired off some good-natured quips about Van Buren, then got serious and said, “There is a lot to admire about her. She’s a professional, she makes deadlines, and she is one of a handful of human beings who roam this earth who has the patience, time and compassion to just listen. That indeed is very rare.”
‘Shoplifting to Face Lifting’
Allyson spoke of how the Dear Abby column has helped her rear her children, her grandchildren and occasionally her husband. And Dr. Judd Marmor, chairman of psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, added that there is no subject that Van Buren hasn’t dealt with, “from shoplifting to face lifting. . . . Her one-liners are funny but often carry a concealed plea for tolerance and understanding. . . .”
There was a standing ovation when the petite Van Buren (whose real name is Pauline Friedman Phillips) accepted her distinguished service award. “The lady who for 30 years has been solving people’s problems has a few of her own,” she said. “How can I thank my friend Erma Bombeck whom I called four months ago to be emcee . . . Morton Phillips, my husband, lover, and live-in editor who believed in me, guided and pushed me, but best of all loved me for nearly 50 years?” And after thanking a host of friends, she added, “Believe me to be deeply grateful.”
The audience hadn’t heard the last of the tributes to Van Buren. Among those giving toasts were John P. McMeel, president of Universal Press Syndicate, which syndicates the Dear Abby column, and Dr. Armand Hammer, who couldn’t attend but sent a note saying, “I wish you three more decades to keep up with me.”