Erma Loved Lucy In the mid-1980s, "Good Morning America," then hosted by actor David Hartman, did a weeklong series honoring Lucille Ball. It was unique in that the staff and crew put together almost an hour’s worth of clips and interviews that ran over five days, not only with Lucy but with all the key people in her life, such as her daughter Lucie, friend Carol Burnett, costar Gale Gordon, and I Love Lucy writers Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Pugh-Davis. With 10 minutes or more running each morning after 8:45 a.m., the result was one of the earliest (if not the first) in-depth media looks at Lucy, her career, and the phenomenal influence of I Love Lucy, and one of the few Ball film biographies (if not the only one) to feature Ball’s participation.
        Part of this tribute, which I was lucky enough to record on videotape (which meant getting to work a bit late each day that week!) featured a particularly moving tribute to Lucy from humorist Erma Bombeck (pictured at left), who lived through the fifties raising a family while watching...I Love Lucy. I thought you’d like to read her essay, so here it is, transcribed by yours truly for your entertainment (and please note that all specific copyrights apply to the text).
       "Dear Lucy Ricardo,

       "Remember me? I didn’t think so. We never met, but for nearly a decade you dropped into my living room on a 10-inch black-and-white screen. I was the woman with the three kids under 5. I never told you what you, and Ricky, and Fred, and Ethel, did for me.

       "The fifties were tough times for housewives. The slick magazines were telling me I was a nurse, a mistress, a chauffeur, a chef, a financier, and a teacher. They forgot fireman – my oven caught fire three times a week. The suburbs pushed us out to a world of septic tanks and crab grass, where the second-highest spot in my week was visiting my meat in the frozen food locker.

      "Want to know what the highest spot in my week was? Monday nights, when my heroine, [the star of] 'I Love Lucy,' came on the screen. You acted out every fantasy I could imagine. You did it all – you defied your husband by ordering furniture you couldn’t afford, you eavesdropped on Bill Holden in a restaurant and nearly fell in his lap, and there wasn’t a week when you didn’t try to leave the house and get a job. I remember the time you and Ethel got a job in the candy factory dipping chocolates. I had just been snowed in with three kids for 10 days, and the prognosis was, ‘She will never laugh again.’ But I did.

       "And when I think back on it, it’s really funny … you were never in a bikini, you never fooled around, you were never involved in a car chase, never had an abortion, never talked divorce – murder every week, but never divorce. And yet you captured that free, independent spirit that is in every woman, and you did it all with style, femininity, intelligence, and good humor.

      "I’ve been sitting here trying to think what set you apart from the Harriet Nelsons, the Donna Stones, the June Cleavers, and Maude, Ann Romano, and Mother Walton, and you know what I decided? You were real. Yes, you were. With all the exaggeration, the clowning, and the contrivances, the best any of us could hope for was a bit of Lucy’s perspective. I guess all I really wanted to say is, that when the pages of women’s history are being written, if the name Lucy Ricardo is not there, it will not reflect the heroine of 70 million housewives of the 1950s.

       "What did you do? You saved our sanity."

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