‘Dear Abby’ Pauline Phillips Dies

Pauline Phillips, the woman who founded the ‘Dear Abby’ advice column, died Wednesday at the age of 94. She had been battling Alzheimer’s disease. Phillips started the column in 1956 under the pseudonym Abigail Van Buren, choosing Abigail “after a wise woman from the old Testament” and Van Buren after her favorite president. In nearly 50 years of writing the column, she grew to have a daily readership of 100 million. Her twin sister, advice columnist Ann Landers, died in 2002. Phillips’s daughter, Jeanne, who co-wrote “Dear Abby” starting in 1987 and took over entirely in 2002, said she has “lost my mother, my mentor, and my best friend.”