Ann Landers' career as a syndicated advice columnist spanned nearly 50 years. The Chicago Tribune was her journalistic home for the past 15 years and her column appeared in more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide, generating more than 2,000 letters each day. Her readers, who numbered close to 90 million and reached into the highest ranges of US society, respected her advice and revered her decades of wise and witty counsel on almost every kind of problem. Landers was widely considered one of the most influential women in America. She was truly a national institution.

Ann Landers was born Esther Pauline Friedman on July 4, 1918, in Sioux City, Iowa, along with her identical twin sister, Pauline Ester Friedman, who would become Abigail Van Buren, also known as Dear Abby.

Landers' parents were Russian immigrants who owned movie theaters. According to Landers, she owed a lot to her parents and her Midwest upbringing. A Tribune reporter interviewing her several years ago quoted Landers' as saying, "I think that middle-American values have helped me tremendously -- the principles, the morality. It was a place where neighbors cared about neighbors. And I mean really cared."

Landers, known to her family and friends by her nickname, Eppie, was an outgoing and very optimistic individual. She married Jules Lederer in 1939 and a year later the couple had their daughter, Margo. Landers would spend the next 16 years as a homemaker and civic and political activist. Once in Chicago, her husband founded the international company, Budget® Rent a Car.

As a Chicagoan, Esther Lederer would become the world's second Ann Landers. The first Landers was a nurse named Ruth Crowley. Crowley had written an advice column in the Chicago Sun-Times and when she died, the Sun-Times held a competition to choose a successor. Competition contestants, including Landers, were asked to respond to identical questions just as a columnist would.

Landers' knack for nurturing relationships enabled her to befriend some of the nation's more thoughtful leaders. One, according to the Tribune account, was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Another was Rev Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame. According to Landers, it was their advice on how to answer some of the questions that helped Landers win the competition. Her first column appeared in the Sun-Times on October 16, 1955, marking the beginning of one of the most celebrated careers in journalism.