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As social issues have grown more complicated, the sisters have kept up with the times. The two now include information about heroin and venereal disease in their advice to teenagers. Landers, based in Chicago, confesses that while disapproving of teen-age sex, she no longer believes that "every girl must hang on to her virginity until marriage or death, whichever comes first." Like Ann, who pioneered the use of expert advice in her column, Sister Abby refers many readers to psychologists, clerics and other specialized counselors—but never before investigating the service. A former World War II Red Cross aide, she has donned a blond wig to visit, incognito, a Gamblers Anonymous meeting in New Jersey, a suicide prevention center in Los Angeles, even a Masters and Johnson clinic in St. Louis. Says she: "I learn more from my mail than a gerontologist can in an average practice."
That mail has not slowed over a quarter-century. Today, Van Buren, who started her newspaper career tapping out pithy answers on a portable typewriter balanced on a card table in her San Francisco den, needs four full-time mail openers, six matronly letter answerers and a research assistant to help with the 25,000 letters that pour into her Beverly Hills office every week. The top topics, to nobody's surprise: sex, loneliness and frustration. Sometimes the mail flow becomes an avalanche: a record 227,000 readers responded when Abby asked in her column last summer whether women over 50 enjoy sex (half were enthusiastic). Over the years the sisters' mail has provided grist for pamphlets and books, including the bestselling Dear Abby and the Ann Landers Encyclopedia.
The pair agree on almost everything, which often leads to the confused comment: "I read it in 'Ann Landers'—or was it 'Dear Abby'?" Some connoisseurs think they can detect a difference. When the Modesto Bee (circ. 65,490) asked its readers last October to vote on which column to run, Landers won by a landslide, 837 to 97. But most readers—and editors —agree with Austin American-Statesman (circ. 128,093) Managing Editor Jeff Bruce, whose paper, like many others, carries both columns. Says he: "I suspect most readers cannot tell one from the other." Big Sister Landers, who appears in the Sun-Times while Abby runs in its Chicago rival, pooh-poohs comparisons.
Asked about her sister's column, she replies sweetly, "Isn't it terrible—I never read the Tribune." —By Janice Castro.
Reported by Michael Moritz/Los Angeles and J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago