“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At age 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.”
This quote about age didn’t originate with Ann Landers
Back in March, we debunked a Facebook post that claimed Winston said: “When you’re 20, you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40, you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”
Fast-forward seven months and we’re looking at a nearly identical post — only this statement is attributed to the late advice columnist Ann Landers.
“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us,” begins the Oct. 17 post titled “Aging Gracefully.” “At age 40, we don’t care what they think. At age 60, we discover that they have not been thinking of us at all.”
Ann Landers was a pen name created by Chicago Sun-Times advice columnist Ruth Crowley in 1943 and taken over by Esther Pauline “Eppie” Lederer (July 4, 1918 – June 22, 2002) in 1955. For 56 years, the Ask Ann Landers syndicated advice column was a regular feature in many newspapers across North America. Owing to this popularity, “Ann Landers”, though fictional, became something of a national institution and cultural icon.
The creator of the “Ann Landers” pseudonym was Ruth Crowley, a Chicago nurse who had been writing a child-care column for the Sun since 1941. She chose the pseudonym at random—borrowing the surname ‘Landers’ from a family friend—to prevent confusion between her two columns. Unlike her eventual successor Esther Lederer, Crowley kept her identity as Landers secret, even enjoining her children to help her keep it quiet. Crowley took a three-year break from writing the column from 1948 until 1951.
After 1951, she continued the column for the Chicago Sun-Times and in syndication (since 1951) to 26 other newspapers until her death, aged 48, on July 20, 1955. Crowley spent a total of nine years writing advice as “Ann Landers”. She also was featured on the 1953-1955 DuMont Television Network series All About Baby.
A few months after Eppie Lederer took over as Ann Landers, her twin sister Pauline Esther “PoPo” Phillips introduced a similar, competing column, Dear Abby, using the pseudonym “Abigail Van Buren”, which produced a lengthy estrangement between the two sisters. Phillips wrote her column until retiring in 2002, at which time her daughter, Jeanne Phillips, took over.